It was the $4 stolen from the pickle jar that drove her to tears.

The coins were donations intended to buy jars of baby food for the food bank.

"I'd rather they smash my windows than take food out of a baby's mouth," says Sandie Manning, wiping angrily at her tears.

This is Sandie of Sandie's Fresh Cut Fries, the fry truck that has been a fixture in the vacant lot at Barton and Kensington for eight years. A fixture because, in part, it's her 'hood and she adores her customers who come with big appetites and big hearts.

But also because the 30-year-old Brinks truck-turned-chip wagon doesn't have insurance. Or a motor. It couldn't move even if Sandie wanted it to.

Sandie is a firecracker. She's 56, a soap box less than five feet tall, and a strong believer in "not taking a lot of crap from nobody."

She has two grandbabies and works 60 hours a week at her truck, always alone. She tried to hire help in the past, but fired 14 people for pocketing money or serving friends and family for free.

So it's just Sandie, six days a week, all year round, cooking up a menu that includes her fries, deep fried pickle spears, homemade Caesar salad, burgers and jalape�o poppers from scratch. She doesn't drive, so she takes a cab to the grocery store to buy her supplies.

Sandie's fry truck is her sole source of income.

She clutches a slip of paper. Written on it are the police incident numbers assigned each time her truck has been broken into. There are 19 of them. She can now add another.

At 4:17 a.m. Tuesday, police called to tell her it happened again.

The ringing phone panicked her because she thought it might be an emergency involving her elderly mother. Then she fell into the routine: hail a cab and get to her truck, meet officers from the BEAR (Break, Enter, Auto Theft and Robbery) unit there. She knows them and they know her.

"They're awesome," she says. "They have to listen to me rant and rave and they're very empathetic."

Sometimes the cops catch the guys who break in. Sometimes they don't. This week, they made an arrest. The 18-year-old is charged with breaking in and stealing a can of iced tea and the $4.

Another time a guy tried to steal a 50-pound bag of potatoes. Once it was a $50 float and her vendor's permit.

A few years ago, Sandie put security cameras in her truck. Even with that evidence, only two guys (all the thieves caught on camera have been men) were convicted.

"Our cops are amazing. It's the bleeding heart judges and lawyers that are the problem."

Those caught breaking into her truck have been youths or men with drug addictions.

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In Sandie's view, the courts want so badly to help the teens and the addicts, they forget all about her.

"My nerves are shot," she says, weeping. "But they're not chasing me away. Not a bunch of crackheads."

Last Thanksgiving, Sadie spent the day sweeping up broken glass in her truck and repairing damage instead of cooking a holiday meal for her family.

"It's such a low-level crime," she says. "Nobody's getting hurt. It's property damage. A home break-in wins hands-down over a business break-in. But I wouldn't have a home if I didn't have a business."

BEAR unit Detective Kevin Stanley says it's tempting to dismiss incidents like this as "petty crimes," but even petty crimes have their victims. And while being a victim of a property crime can be a financially difficult experience, it can also be an emotionally draining one.

"It doesn't have to be a violent crime for it to have an effect on a person," he says.

This time, the theft of the donations was the final straw.

Since May, Sandie's customers put enough money into the pickle jar that she was able to buy 500 jars of baby food for Mission Services.

"These guys are coddled by the system," she says. "Give them some real jail time."