Laundry room burglars sentenced for two-bit haul

Two Hoquiam men will serve jail time after breaking into an apartment building’s laundry room.

Michael L. Anderson, 29, and James P. Dudley, 44, were both sentenced in Grays Harbor Superior Court Monday for breaking into a locked laundry room in an apartment complex in the 400 block of Queen Avenue in Hoquiam.

Dudley was sentenced to six months and Anderson 45 days in Grays Harbor County Jail. The burglary itself netted them $4.50 in quarters, according to the Hoquiam Police Department, but the damage to the laundry room and machines will cost more than $1,300 to repair.

At Anderson’s sentencing, Judge Gordon Godfrey suggested the men would have been better off working minimum wage jobs.

Looking at the damages as income over the six-month sentence, Godfrey said, “it comes out to like 37 cents an hour. I made more picking blueberries when I was 9 years old.”