The 2021-2022 LP Hall LP Newcomer of the Year

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The hall is designed to recognize, celebrate and reward individuals in and around the retail loss prevention industry, recognizing achievement and excellence in a variety of categories. It is designed to celebrate the lifetime achievements of industry leaders who have contributed so much to benefit the industries in which they have served.

They paved the way for those who followed them. They are leaders in innovation, design, process and policy. They have led exemplary careers, been masters at mentoring and sharing to help loss prevention professionals improve the industry, giving back and passing on to those who follow.

LP Newcomer of the Year

The LP Rising Star is a rising star who has shown through his words, actions and behavior that he is a role model to others, a leader in his company and a positive, insightful and exemplary representative of the loss prevention industry now and in the future. You make a positive impact on the lives of others and lead by example, whether in prosperous times, times of change or difficult times.

For the 2021-2022 LP Rising Star of the Year, watch here:

This year’s finalists

The 2021-2022 finalists for LP Newcomer of the Year include:

Douglas Horsting, senior expert on asset protection, Rite Aid

Douglas Horsting joined Rite Aid in June 2021 as Lead Asset Protection Investigator. The role was newly created to address the significant increase in outside theft and ORC activity in NYC and NY boroughs. Before joining Rite Aid, Doug worked as a head of security at a hospital.

In today’s retail environment, external theft has become an unprecedented challenge in major cities, coupled with Covid-19, and the problem seems insurmountable. Despite all the obstacles, Doug took on the task and not only found a path to success, but exceeded all expectations. He took the time to train store level employees on our policies and the need to work safely when dealing with external theft. He emphasized documenting all activities to understand theft patterns and identify repeat offenders.

Then he went one step further and became a law enforcement liaison. He contacted each county and scheduled meetings to educate officers on patterns of theft at each store, and provided documents and videos to help law enforcement identify repeat offenders. He planned covert operations with the officers to apprehend the shoplifting suspects. He contacts the DA’s office to make sure they understand the extent of the losses the businesses are suffering as a result of these repeat offenders. He attends every county meeting that law enforcement has with the community and speaks directly to the public about officers’ efforts to provide a safe shopping experience. It is currently replicating this effort in twenty counties across the city and is working tirelessly to expand its reach. He is responsible for a record number of arrests and, more importantly, for a much safer working environment in our stores.

Doug doesn’t take no for granted, he’s definitely a rising star.

Emma Gomez, Albertson’s Companies

Emma Gomez is an exceptional employee, a tremendous asset to our department and she deserves this award and recognition.

COLLABORATION: Emma has developed numerous partnerships. She is a strong communicator and has taken the initiative to support our facility protection department teams along with corporate support functional areas in a collaborative effort.

COMMITMENT TO HIGH STANDARDS: With an immense amount of change at the company, department and branch level, Emma has used data to consistently raise expectations around quality, support and customer service.

LEADERSHIP in TEAMWORK: Emma has organized and led team meetings and training/development initiatives. She has strongly guided and overseen our case management system. Her understanding of retail store operations, corporate function groups, e-commerce and the complexities of the supply chain has enabled her to take on leadership roles.

PASSION: Emma is a self-motivator, extremely organized and is constantly learning new ways to handle routine activities both efficiently and effectively. Her continued attention to detail and development of best practices has earned her peers’ respect.

RESPONSIBILITY/SERVICE: Emma consistently goes above and beyond the job and strives for excellence. Her willingness to help others and positive attitude to get the job done are reflected in her team player approach.

Gary Schlotthauer, Lead Loss Prevention (ETLAP) Target Corp leadership team

It is my great pleasure to nominate Gary Schlotthauer for the 2021 LP Rising Star. Aside from being exemplary at his job, Gary’s twenty years of military service showed an extraordinary commitment to our country.

Gary is a results-driven loss prevention professional. His expertise and shared knowledge enabled him to be the role model and best loss prevention manager compared to his peers. Gary has been a consistent leader in his local community, recognized through partnerships with local law enforcement and neighboring retail partners such as Lowe’s, Kohl’s, The Home Depot and Walmart.

Gary is considered the “Go To” Loss Prevention Coach in his district. Additionally, during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gary was able to manage crowd control resulting in 0 incidents as his store restricted the number of customers in store. Gary has also partnered with the business to help comply with local, state and federal COVID-19 guidelines through training and development.

Gary devised a strategy that allowed his team to rank 1st in both Merchandise Cases Recovered and Dollars Recovered in his district, earning him the nickname “Rising Star”.

Gary’s theft detection and damage control surpassed its predecessor. During more than three years as Executive Team Leader – Asset Protection Manager, his team’s production increased by the following amounts

• Total Theft Proven 142% better than in the three years prior to its acquisition
• Is recovering 312% better than in the three years prior to taking office
• 183% better dollar recovery than in the three years before he took office
• Theft detection improved 148% over the three years prior to taking office
• 177% better theft identification dollars than in the three years prior to taking office

Gary is a rising star and top leader in loss prevention. His content on LinkedIn is followed by loss prevention professionals worldwide.

Tori Connelly, MOD Pizza

In 2021, Tori began a career in Asset Protection as a Loss Prevention Investigator. She had no experience in loss prevention and accepted the challenge head on. Her great attention to detail and high level of organization contributed greatly to the success. And she was successful. Tori generated the highest number of investigations leading to terminations that our team has seen (doubling over previous years). We did this by learning and using technology (both new and old) to identify theft, operational issues, training gaps and loopholes in our checkout and exception reporting systems.

Tori quickly established herself as a trusted and valuable business partner in the field, providing assistance and allowing the field to come to her with potential investigations. Always available, Tori tries to offer solutions and finds solutions when she doesn’t have them herself.

In addition to her work as an investigator, she put a lot of work into building relationships with a new vendor and led much of the project implementation for a new video management system, DVRs and alarm panels at all locations. This was no easy task, especially given significant supply chain setbacks and labor shortages during installation. Upon completion, she continued to strengthen those relationships and worked to ensure the project worked optimally for our team and our clients. She has mastered the new tools and has done our DM and RD team a tremendous service and saved them a lot of work.

Tori is a real asset to our company and the Asset Protection team. We are grateful to have her and excited to see how she develops in the future.

Tyler St. John, Meijer

Tyler has been dedicated to his work since day one. He has learned so many new skills and information about Meijer over the last few years. He strives to successfully take on tougher stores each year and help them become a success. His most recent success was at a store that was formerly a shrink focus store. During Tyler’s role at this store, he managed to work alongside the team and was able to help the store come off the Shrink focus list based on his partnerships and wealth of knowledge. Tyler is now working on his new role at another hard store that has also been on the Shrink Focus Store List consecutively. Tyler has already started building those relationships and teaching the business how to improve those numbers.

Will Waddell, LPM, Dick’s Sporting Goods

Will led arrests for the Walmart chain in 2018, training countless new APAs to run their stores. In 2021, Will was still hardworking and honed his skills when he moved to DSG. Although less tech-savvy due to working at a smaller company, Will remained a productive executive for the entire Dicks Sporting Goods chain, completing outside cases and conducting prosecutions at 6 different DSG locations in 5 different counties, a testament to its developed partnership with various police departments. Will has also reduced the attrition in his shop enough to demote the shop out of the red Fix Shop category. Will is always there. His success in 2021 led to his promotion to Loss Prevention Manager in 2022. Will is always willing to help fellow police and LP members identify their cases and has done so many times. Will is a perfect candidate for the rising star.

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