They shopped till store was locked

A day of buying Christmas gifts turned into a shopaholic’s dream for three women who accidentally got locked in a store at Fashion Island on Sunday night.

Their first question was how to get out. And their next question? Where do they keep the champagne?

It happened at Gary’s men’s store, when the women came back to pick up some gifts they were having wrapped, said Marci Hollander, a Newport Beach resident who was among the unwitting captives of consumerism.

Hollander and her two friends had gone to have a drink at a nearby restaurant while they waited for the gifts to be wrapped. After no one brought the gifts to them as promised, they went back to the store just as one employee was locking up for the night.

He let them in and left, and one remaining employee paged someone to help them, and then he apparently left also.

The store lights were still on, so the women waited a while. When they didn’t see or hear anyone and found the front doors were locked, they poked around the store.

“We decided to open the refrigerator to see if they had any champagne, because if we’re stuck, let’s have a drink!” said Francine Hyan of Yorba Linda. “But there was no champagne [in the store] — only men’s clothes.”

So they shopped a little more.

“We had nothing else to do, so we were looking at the new shirts and the new sweaters,” Hollander said.

After a while, they found the phone number for mall security and a guard came, but he wasn’t able to let them out, so they waited until the store’s co-owner, John Braeger, arrived and unlocked the doors.

Nothing like that has ever happened at Gary’s before, Braeger said — it was just one of those busy nights where everyone was trying to get home at closing time.

“Everyone thought the other person was locking up,” and the employee who actually locked the doors thought more workers were still inside, he said.

The women spent about an hour locked in the store before they were set free. And Nedda Mitchell of Newport Coast, who was the one waiting for her purchases to be wrapped, did finally get her gifts.

All three women said they’re not done with their shopping yet, so they planned to head back to Fashion Island, and probably even to Gary’s.

None of the three friends were upset by the incident — Mitchell said things like that always happen when they’re together.

“You couldn’t have been locked in a place with better friends,” she said. “It actually kind of made the day hilariously funny toward the end.”

The experience did leave Hyan with one regret, she said.

“The only thing I wish is that it was Traditional [Jewelers] instead of Gary’s,” she said.