Over $200K stolen from Cabrillo Street jeweler, Modern Relics
Neal Wong • Oct. 2026 Issue • Published in The Richmond Review
For 20 years, Modern Relics has sat on a quiet residential stretch of Cabrillo Street. The ground-floor gallery had antiques and display cases, and a loft studio held the gold, diamonds and jewelry that owner Alix Blüh spent decades making.
On the morning of Aug. 13, Blüh walked the block from her home to the shop near Ninth Avenue and saw the front door broken. She thought she had been vandalized. Inside, she found her display cases smashed, with broken glass everywhere. Upstairs, the metal locker where she kept her most valuable work had been emptied.
“I had my life’s work and purpose completely stolen from me,” Blüh said. “I felt incredibly violated. I felt angry.”
Blüh estimates the losses, including property damage, at $200,000 to $300,000. The business she has run since 2006 will not return as a high-end jewelry store.
Allison Maxie, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), said officers from the Richmond Station responded to the store at about 10:50 a.m. that morning.
“Officers arrived on scene and met with the reporting party who advised that the business was burglarized during the overnight hours,” Maxie said. “A preliminary walkthrough of the business determined that there was property damage to the entry of the business and that thousands of dollars in merchandise had been stolen.”
No arrests have been made so far.
“This is an open and active investigation led by the SFPD Burglary Unit,” Maxie said. “Anyone with information is asked to contact SFPD at 415-575-4444. You may remain anonymous.”
Blüh said security cameras inside and outside the shop captured one person entering and leaving. The videos also show two other people outside who may have been acting as lookouts.
“You can’t tell who the person is,” Blüh said. “They’re covered in a mask. They’re covered in a hat.”
Blüh never displayed valuable jewelry in her windows, and visitors had to be buzzed in. Still, she recalled two visits in the past six months that now concern her, including a couple who wanted to photograph everything in the shop.
“I do have an inclination that I was cased,” Blüh said. “One person asked if they could look around, and they probably put 30 seconds into looking around. He came in, he took a look, looked upstairs, looked down, looked around and bolted out.”
Blüh said other jewelers and galleries around the Bay Area have been hit in a similar way, including a colleague whose Sausalito studio was robbed and vandalized about six months ago. She believes thieves use Instagram to find targets.
“Somebody came into my shop and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of my hard work,” Blüh said. “Things that I spent years building, things that cost me thousands and thousands of dollars to make.”
Devora Depper, who walks past the shop often, learned of the break-in from a notice Blüh posted, asking whether anyone had seen anything.
“I’m shocked and horrified, and very sorry for the person who owns the store,” Depper said. “This is usually a very safe neighborhood.”
Linda Soltis, another neighbor, said she had never been inside but was always curious about the shop, which was usually closed when she passed. She said the neighborhood mostly sees car break-ins, and the burglary made her feel a little less safe.
“I was heartbroken when I read that somebody smashed her cases and stole her valuables,” Soltis said.
Before opening the shop, Blüh spent about a decade running a wholesale business that sold her jewelry in numerous galleries across the world. She took over the Cabrillo Street space from a friend who ran a jewelry school. Over two decades, she hosted art openings and events and made wedding bands and one-of-a-kind pieces, relying largely on word of mouth.
This was the first time the shop had been burglarized.
“I might have recovered if this happened 15 years ago, but things are different now,” Blüh said. “I don’t have $200,000 to invest in gold and gold castings on that level.”
According to a GoFundMe campaign created by Alix’s sister and niece, the losses were uninsured.
“Specialized insurance for a jewelry studio came with costs and restrictions that did not fit the way Alix ran her small, independent business,” the donation page says.
In the weeks since, she has been clearing out damaged pieces and coming to terms with the loss.
Blüh has no reopening date currently set and said she will never store anything of high value in the space again. When the store does operate again, she plans to focus on selling handmade ceramics and more affordable beaded jewelry made with semiprecious stones. She hopes to open for one weekend a month and offer the space to other makers for pop-ups.
“I will never have it be an open-every-weekend kind of store,” Blüh said. “Life just got real, and I have a lot less of it in the bank of my life. I’m in the last quarter of my life, and I want to make it count.”
Find the GoFundMe campaign at gofundme.com/f/help-us-restore-the-magic-of-modern-relics
