Nick Eklund

[January 18th, 2006] Bryan Lister knew he was asking for trouble when he bought a 1.5-square-foot magnetic "bumper sticker" last summer for his car with the words "Bush Lied They Died" printed over the names of 1,693 American soldiers killed in Iraq.

Drivers have flipped Lister the bird, yelled obscenities and left nasty notes on his windshield.

But the 33-year-old software programmer never expected anyone to steal it. Then, on Dec. 22, while he was sitting by a window in his downtown Gresham office, he saw two middle-aged men absconding with the sign in the parking lot below.

Lister ran outside, approached an idling GMC Yukon and asked the men for his sign back. Although they denied having it and drove off, Lister memorized their license plate and called police.

Police traced that license plate to Nick Eklund , the 54-year-old son of Don and Marie Eklund, who own Heidi's Restaurant, an old-school Gresham eatery.

Gresham police officer Travis Garrison spoke with Nick Eklund on the phone and repeated Lister's story of the parking-lot confrontation—minus one crucial detail: "I did not tell Eklund that the magnet had been taken from the side of the vehicle," Garrison wrote in his report.

The report said Eklund then became increasingly agitated (he accused the officer of wasting his tax dollars) and finally blurted that he didn't take anything off the side of the car. When the officer responded that he "had not mentioned anything about the magnet being on the side of the car," the report said Eklund stuttered that his friend Roger Wall had been in the passenger seat, although he didn't specifically accuse Wall of the theft.

Eklund promised to set up a meeting with Wall and the officer but then stopped returning police phone calls. Gresham police say the matter has been referred to detectives for further investigation.

In a phone interview with WW, Eklund denied Lister's version of events, saying, "He's got the wrong story.... I don't have to talk to you," and then hung up.

Meantime, Lister just bought two new signs, identical to the one he lost, from www.carryabigsticker.com.