For those of you in North Kitsap who haven’t heard, now more than ever a few Kingston businesses need your helping hands.

On Saturday, Coastal Coffee, Fabricare Cleaners, Kingston Crossing Chiropractic, Kingston Mail Center and Pine Cone Gifts were targeted by thieves. These are not just community businesses — they are community friends.

Over the past several years, this paper has welcomed the majority of their owners to the North Kitsap business world through articles and/or briefs. As the Herald has done this, our staff has also gotten to know the people who have decided to go out on a limb and start their own stores and services.

Along with the greater North Kitsap community, we also frequent these establishments, know the folks who work there and spend our dollars supporting them.

The burglary shocked us as well.

We’re not big on people who don’t earn what they get. Criminals who feel that they can take whatever they want whenever they want.

Such acts lead to mistrust.

They make us wonder who could do such a thing and who could care so little about their neighbors that they would steal from them?

We hope this selfish act will not go unpunished.

We want to remind these business owners that no matter what a few individuals may have put you through, it cannot measure up to the community’s support. We’re also confident that your neighbors will rise to the occasion and remind you all why you decided to go out on that limb to begin with.

The tree will support the branch, we just have to shake a few bad apples off first.