Within two days after a burglar stole $10,000 from Star Confectionery, the iconic East Main Street luncheonette in Riverhead, the community fundraised enough to replace the stolen money.
More than 130 individual donations to a GoFundMe started by one of the restaurant’s longtime employees totaled $10,850 for Papa Nick’s — as the beloved luncheonette is known locally — a downtown staple serving breakfast, lunch, candy and ice cream to Riverhead for more than a century.
“I can’t ask this community for more than what they’ve done for me. I mean, I’m so overwhelmed. It’s amazing. It really, really is,” said Anthony Meras, the third-generation owner of the restaurant. “With all that’s bad that’s going on, there’s still a lot of good in this world.”
Star Confectionery was broken into sometime between midday Monday and early Tuesday, according to Riverhead Police. Meras said the burglar forced open a basement door to get inside, then got into his safe, which contained $3,000 he was planning to deposit in his bank and around $7,000 to pay the business’s sales taxes. The burglar also stole a stack of $2 bills Meras had been collecting — a habit he picked up from his mother.
“I didn’t know whether to cry or throw up,” Meras said, recalling his reaction to discovering the burglary. Meras said Riverhead Police are still investigating the burglary, but that he considers the money stolen “long gone.”
“It was strange on that first morning. I had no money in the store. Zero. Nothing. And my first thought was, I’m going to close. And then I said to myself: How can I close? I have no money,” Meras said.
He quickly found kindness and generosity during a hard time. The truck drivers delivering food to the restaurant declined taking any of the $70 Meras had left in his wallet — one of them “literally ripped the bill up in front of me,” he said.
Michelle Papa, a part-time employee whose first job as a teenager was at the Star Confectionery, had the idea of setting up the GoFundMe after the burglary as “just something simple that I knew was going to get [Meras] back on his feet.”
The fundraiser launched Wednesday night and was quickly shared on social media. It hit its fundraising goal Thursday morning.
“I couldn’t believe it. It was incredible,” she said of the GoFundMe donations. “I don’t even know if it was up for 12 hours.” The fundraiser is not taking any more donations; Meras told Papa to shut it down soon after it met its $10,000 goal.
“I’ve been there 25-plus years and we’ve had a lot of the same customers, same regulars, as long as I’ve worked there,” Papa said. “It’s old-school Riverhead. It’s people that have been in the town and this has just been a staple for them. I think it’s one of the few things in Riverhead that hasn’t changed.”
Meras said the people who dine at Star Confectionery are not just customers, but friends and family. He’s said he’s been “overwhelmed by the outpouring of help and calls and texts” by the community.
“It’s a relentless business, but when something like this happens and you have people around you that care and love you, it makes it all the more rewarding,” Meras said.
“The love from the town for me and my family, that’s something special. I’ll never forget that,” he said.
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