Great Raid of the Eyeshadows

The Great Raid of the Eyeshadows was a coordinated shoplifting raid at South Coast Plaza that became a defining story of Prairie Wheeler and Ché’s childhood daring. Its precision turned a department-store theft into a rapid escape, and Prairie’s intervention made the raid a story not only of the group’s planning but of her loyalty under pressure.

Planning and Execution

Shortly before closing, two dozen girls in black jeans and T-shirts entered the department store on roller skates, carrying empty backpacks. They knew the layout and moved with clockwork precision, filling their bags in only a few minutes with lipstick, eyeshadow, mascara, earrings, headbands, bracelets, pantyhose, and sunglasses. The speed and coordination made the raid seem almost choreographed, but its purpose was practical: the stolen goods were immediately converted into cash through a fence named Olis, who later resold them at a fair far away.

Prairie’s Intervention

During the escape, Prairie saw Ché about to be trapped between a store guard and a boy only slightly older than the girls, wearing a plastic jacket and shouting as though the stolen goods belonged to him. The guard was unfastening his holster. Prairie accelerated into the crowd, yelling to interrupt the pursuit, reached Ché, grabbed her wrist, and spun them until they faced the right direction. They fled together. The danger briefly narrowed around Ché; Prairie’s quick intervention bought the pair the opening they needed.

Escape and Afterlife

Prairie experienced the rush as almost superhuman speed, likening the scene to Jaime Sommers driving through defenders who seemed to move in slow motion. Against that imagined athletic action, the store loudspeakers continued to play cheerful music. The background tune was an upbeat oboe-and-strings arrangement of Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” music that soothed bystanders and encouraged them to treat the raid as something other than what it appeared to be, allowing the ordinary routine to resume.

The raid did not disappear with the girls into the evening shadows. It was still discussed with dismay at retail-surveillance conferences across the country, its timing and command of the store’s layout making it an example of the very problem those gatherings addressed. In Prairie and Ché’s shared childhood repertoire, the escape also endured as a comic partnership: Prairie teased Ché for her hard-edged attitude toward the world, even though Prairie herself had proved willing to use physical force when a friend was in danger.