I said: "Mrs. Kilroy, what kind of arrangement did you have in mind?" She said: "Well, Sheriff..." I said: "I'm not the sheriff, ma'am. The sheriff is in Marquette." She said: "Oh, I'm sorry. Well, Mr. Hollis, I think what would benefit both of our communities is a discount on fuel for Birch Harbor Estates members. Maybe a flat 10% off retail. We have 36 member households. Many of us drive trucks and SUVs. It would be a meaningful relationship for your station."
I said: "Mrs. Kilroy, our retail margin on fuel is 6.5 cents per gallon. A 10% discount on retail would cost me approximately 22 cents per gallon out of pocket. I would lose money on every gallon Birch Harbor Estates members purchased. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to do that."
She tilted her head. She said: "Oh, but Mr. Hollis, our HOA also has a small private fuel facility on site for our member convenience. I was thinking the relationship could include you, perhaps, providing the wholesale fuel for that pump. We would, of course, source from your station rather than driving down to Marquette. It would be a real partnership."
That was the sentence that should have told me, on a Saturday in May of 2022, exactly what Margaret Kilroy was running at Birch Harbor Estates. I did not know it on that Saturday. I should have. I had been a Michigan-trained police officer for 26 years. I had been a UP gas station owner for eight. I had heard exactly that kind of sentence twice before in my career: in 2014 and again in 2017, from two different people who had both ended up indicted in federal court inside of three years.
I just said, on that Saturday: "Mrs. Kilroy, the retail price at the pump is the price. The bulk wholesale agreements I have are with my regional supplier in Green Bay. They are not transferable. I will not be selling fuel to your HOA at wholesale. Thank you for coming in. Cora, would you ring her up if she'd like a coffee?"
Margaret did not buy a coffee. She left. She did not come back to the station for the next 18 months.
What she did during those 18 months was a great deal of other work. She walked into the Oakdale Pasty Cafe in August of 2022 and asked the owner, my cousin Rita, for a Birch Harbor Estates community discount on a standing order of 40 pasties every Saturday morning for the HOA's weekend brunch club. Rita laughed in her face and rang her up at retail. Margaret did not come back to the pasty cafe for 13 months.
She walked into the Oakdale Hardware Cooperative in September of 2022 and asked the owner, a Finnish-American man named Sulo Kantelli, for an HOA rate discount on a winter delivery of seasoned cordwood. Sulo, who is 71 and who had been delivering cordwood to UP residents at retail since 1979, said in his careful, Finnish-inflected English: "Mrs. Kilroy, the price of cordwood is the price of cordwood. The trees do not know your HOA." Margaret did not come back to the hardware co-op until she needed a snow shovel in January of 2023, at which point she paid retail.
She walked into Jonas Salmela's deer processing barn in October of 2022 with two white-tailed does her husband had shot, and she asked for a community amenity discount on the processing fee. Jonas, who is 68 and who had been processing deer in Oakdale since 1981, said one sentence to her in Finnish—which I will not translate here—and went back to his work. Margaret did not come back to Jonas. She drove her deer to a processor in Negaunee.
In total, between May of 2022 and December of 2023, Margaret Kilroy attempted to extract a Birch Harbor Estates community amenity discount from 11 separate Oakdale businesses. She was refused at every one. She did not call the police on any of them. She did not file complaints against any of them. She did not yell at any of them. She simply went to the next business on her list and tried again.
What she did was build, very quietly, on the southwest corner of the Birch Harbor Estates amenity park, an unpermitted 3,300-gallon underground storage tank with a single dispensing pump, a small gatehouse cover, and a private bookkeeping system administered by her own LLC. She bought retail fuel in town, trucked it back to her tank in 50-gallon drums on the back of her husband's Ford F-350, and resold it at her HOA's private pump to her own members at a 30-cent-per-gallon markup.
Across 18 months, the operation grossed approximately $86,000 in revenue and net, after retail purchase costs, approximately $51,000 in pure margin. The margin went into Birch Harbor Hospitality Ventures LLC, of which Daniel Kilroy was the registered agent and Margaret was the sole member.
Her demand at my station on the second Tuesday of January 2024 was not for personal use. It was for wholesale supply to her retail resale operation. Wholesale fuel would have raised her margin from 30 cents per gallon to 78 cents per gallon. The 18-month operation that had net her $51,000 would, with my wholesale supply, have net her something closer to $170,000. That was the operation I refused.
I did not know about that work yet. I would learn about it in the 14 weeks following her January 2024 return. The 14 weeks would close on a Tuesday in mid-April at the Oakdale Township Hall, with the Michigan State Police, the EPA Region 5 emergency response coordinator, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), the Marquette County prosecutor, and 117 residents of Oakdale Township in the seats.
Margaret Kilroy would walk into that meeting believing she was about to revoke my gas station's commercial license. She would walk out of that meeting in handcuffs, with the underground storage tank at her HOA's private amenity park being pumped out at the same minute by an EPA-certified contractor, who would charge her HOA, eventually, $147,000 for the work.
Margaret Kilroy walked back into my gas station on the second Tuesday of January 2024 at 8:21 a.m. with her Stanley insulated mug, her turquoise parka, and a particular expression on her face that I recognized from 26 years of police work as the expression of a person who has decided the morning is going to be about them, whether anyone else likes it or not.
She walked past four regular customers at the coffee station. She walked past Cora at the register. She came up to the counter where I was unloading a case of WD-40 from the back room.