SCOTTSDALE, AZ — It was after midnight on a summer night in 1985 when an alarm went off at a downtown art gallery.
Police found a gaping hole in the front glass. The thief – or thieves – had reached in, pulled out a two-foot-tall bronze statue of a cowboy, and vanished.
Art galleries didn’t have video cameras then, so there were no leads on who may have taken the statue. Police dusted for fingerprints — but that failed to turn up anything. The gallery owners even printed up flyers, offering a $1,000 reward.
“There were a lot of pieces in the gallery worth more than that. But they wanted that,” said Nancy Emmons, whose parents Bob and Betty Mammen, owned the gallery named the Mammen Gallery II.
The statue depicts a cowboy taking a break while holding a can of chewing tobacco. It’s called “Just a Pinch,” after a 1970s tobacco commercial slogan, “Just a pinch between your cheek and gum.”
New Mexico artist Gordon Snidow created about 40 similar statues, using his son as the model. Nicknamed “Pinch,” the statue that ended up in the Scottsdale gallery was No. 20.
Betty Mammen bought Pinch because one of her customers, who was a winter visitor, wanted the statue. But before the customer could return to Scottsdale to pay and pick up the art, it was taken.
“She was devastated,” Emmons said of her mother’s reaction.
Betty Mammen was still making payments toward the $12,488 statue. Receipts that Emmons found in a box of her mother’s belongings show the payments continued even after it was stolen until the statue was paid off.
She recalls her mother would occasionally check with police to see if there were any leads.
“They really had nothing to go on,” she said.
At some point – it’s unclear when – the FBI added a photo and description of the missing Pinch to its National Stolen Art File, a database of stolen art and cultural property. The database went online in 2010, making the information readily available to the public.
Last year, the ABC15 Investigators asked the FBI for a list of stolen art from Arizona and then profiled several treasures, including the missing Pinch.
The ABC15 story was brought to the attention of Arlin Cook, who lives in Gilbert.
“My daughter’s boyfriend saw the show – the ABC15 investigation – and said, ‘Hey that statue you have was on this (show),’” he said.
Cook’s statue matched the FBI description right down to the number “20” etched into the base along with the artist’s name.
ABC15 is committed to finding the answers you need and holding those accountable.
Submit your news tip to Investigators@abc15.com
He inherited the statue after his brother-in-law, a bachelor, died in 2022. The cowboy sat on the fireplace mantle inside the living room of his brother-in-law’s Scottsdale home for more than 30 years.
“Had been there as far as I can ever remember,” Cook said.
He isn’t sure how the statue ended up in his brother-in-law’s possession – in the same city and only miles away from the art gallery where it went missing.
“He would not have stolen it. I think he probably got it in a trade because he traded antiques,” he said.
When Cook learned the statue was likely stolen, he called the FBI and spoke to ABC15.
“We felt like, well, we don't want this if it's stolen,” he told ABC15.
FBI agents came to his home and picked up the statue.
But it wasn’t as simple as returning it to the Scottsdale gallery. The gallery had long since closed. Bob and Betty Mammen were no longer alive.
ABC15 contacted their daughter, Emmons, about the statue. She eventually found a box of her mother’s paperwork, showing the payments her mother had made on the statue.
“I wish that he had been recovered when my parents were still alive. They would have loved that,” Emmons said. “I'm sure they're looking down and really happy that he's back.”
Emmons said she called Cook and left a voicemail, thanking him for turning Pinch over to the FBI. She hopes to meet him in person someday.
“I'm so impressed by that. In this day and age, you hear so seldom that someone does the right thing like that,” she said.
For now, Pinch sits in the living room of her Chandler home.
She hopes he can eventually find a permanent home in a museum where people can see him and learn his story.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook.
