The Night Voltaco’s Got Robbed
Working at Voltaco’s Ocean City NJ for all those years gave me plenty of stories. Most of them involve cheesesteaks, friends, stupid things we did when we were young, and the kind of nights you remember much better than you probably should.
One night was different, It became one of those Ocean City stories I’ve never been able to forget.
The Night at Voltaco’s Ocean City NJ
It was closing time, and I was standing in the alley behind the shop, closer to the 10th Street end than 9th. Joe was usually the last one to leave. Voltaco’s was a cash-only business, so at the end of the night there was real money to account for, and Joe had his routine for taking care of it.
I didn’t see the robbery happen. That’s the strange part. I had no idea anything was wrong.
What I did see was Joe’s truck.
It was backing up through the alley and heading toward 10th Street, except Joe wasn’t behind the wheel. There was another man driving it, and as he passed me, he looked directly at me.
I looked directly back.
At that moment, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I didn’t know that only moments earlier, according to Joe, this man had put a shotgun in his face and robbed him. To me, he was simply some guy driving Joe’s truck.
Then Joe came running out.
He told me he’d been robbed.
At first, I didn’t believe him. Maybe it was because my brain hadn’t caught up with what was happening, or maybe because nothing about the previous thirty seconds had seemed unusual enough to prepare me for those words.
Then I looked at Joe’s eyes.
I believed him.
The police arrived, questions were asked, and suddenly the meaningless few seconds I’d spent looking at a stranger became important. I had seen his face. More importantly, he had seen mine.
That realization stayed with me.
I eventually had to go to court because I was a potential witness. I remember being there knowing that somewhere in all of this was the man I’d watched drive down that alley. In the end, I was never called to testify.
The robbery also made me think about something I’d seen hundreds of times without giving it much thought. Voltaco’s dealt heavily in cash, and at closing Joe would take the night’s money out with him. I don’t know what the robber knew, and I don’t want to pretend that I do, but it always seemed possible to me that someone had watched the business long enough to understand Joe’s routine.
After that night, there wasn’t much of a routine to watch anymore. Joe changed things up and took precautions. There was even police protection around closing for a while.
And because this was Ocean City, where everyone’s story somehow connected to everyone else’s, Joe’s brother happened to be a detective with the Ocean City Police Department.
Years later, when I managed to get myself arrested over four mostly smoked joints, guess who helped bail me out?
Joe’s brother.
You really couldn’t make this stuff up.
Voltaco’s is gone now. Joe and the family eventually decided it was time to to step away from the restaurant business. But for those of us who spent years there, the place still exists in the stories—the long shifts, the friends, the cheesesteaks, and nights like this one.
There were thousands of ordinary nights in that alley.
I remember the one that wasn’t.
I can still picture that truck moving toward 10th Street.
And I can still remember the face of the man behind the wheel, looking back at me.
