FREELAND — Taking over a business is always a risk. A pair of café owners in Freeland weren’t expecting this kind, however.

Timbuktu owners Lauryn Taylor and Chris Jacobs had a memorable one-year anniversary of their café business, albeit not an entirely pleasant one.

A man attempted to steal cash from the register and tip jar Saturday afternoon. However, Jacobs chased the would-be robber of hundreds of dollars and retrieved most of it, thanks to a flustered get-away driver.

“We were celebrating, we were pretty happy and then this happened,” Taylor said.

Shortly after closing the café about 4 p.m., Taylor and her 8-year-old son left to catch the 4:30 ferry to Mukilteo. As they exited out the back door, a man was in the parking lot.

Taylor said he appeared to be waiting for someone, smiled at them and said, “Hello,” before he tried to open the back door of Coldwell Banker.

As they watched the man wait behind Texaco, her son asked if he was a robber, Taylor said.

“There was nothing suspicious, nothing sketchy,” she said. “He appeared to be waiting for somebody.”

As it turns out, there’s nothing like a child’s intuition.

Jacobs stepped outside to the front of the building to speak with customers on his way out. He heard the cash register open, turned and saw a man grabbing cash.

Jacobs yelled for a Texaco employee to call 911 as he ran into the café and told the thief to stop. Jacobs then chased him out the back door, around the building and to the front of the small business complex on Highway 525 next to the Texaco gas station in Freeland.

“He wasn’t going to be a victim,” Taylor said of Jacobs, her husband.

The robber jumped into the passenger side of a small, white pickup truck as the driver, a woman, attempted to engage the clutch.

Jacobs again asked for the man to return the cash, and he recorded the car license plate identification. The thief dropped a large roll of cash out the window then switched seats with the woman to drive away.

Island County sheriff’s deputies arrived shortly afterward. They tracked the license to its registered address and within an hour, questioned a woman and made an arrest.

Jacobs and Taylor said they adjusted some company protocols to guarantee the safety of their employees, the business and themselves.

The theft, however, has left them a little frazzled.

“It really makes you step back and review how you’re doing business,” Taylor said. “Unfortunately, it also makes you less trusting. Chris and I, we’re positive, open, trusting people. It’s not part of my nature to look at somebody who’s pleasant, smiling, saying hello to you, and be suspicious.”

Business was back to normal Monday, with a dozen customers sitting in the café, enjoying lattes and coffee.

“I don’t feel like this is going to happen again here,” Taylor said. “It’s been a great year.”