Former Santa Barbara planning commissioner and mayoral candidate Deborah Schwartz allegedly took a circa 1880s collectible rug from a venerable downtown store without paying for it, but the store owner declined to press charges.

Schwartz did not return a reporter’s phone calls requesting comment.

After being informed of the incident on Friday by Noozhawk, the top leadership of the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County met, discussed the matter with Schwartz, and she reportedly resigned from her position on the board of directors.

She had been serving as treasurer.

Schwartz allegedly took the rug — a Germantown Navajo saddle blanket — from Star Rug Cleaners on Nov. 17, and then returned it Thursday after store owner Mike Jensen told her he would get others involved.

A Santa Barbara police officer wrote up a report on the incident after Jensen called police on Nov. 18.

Jensen told Noozhawk that all he wanted was the rug back.

“I was trying to keep my moral compass of what I wanted to do,” he explained. “If it were a low-income person, I would have dropped the charges.”

The incident was caught on the store’s surveillance video, which was obtained by Noozhawk earlier this week.

In the video, Schwartz spreads the rug out on the floor, folds it back up, and walks to the counter.

She then stuffs the rug into her white tote bag. At just that moment, the store clerk walks back into the frame and can be heard saying, “You walked away.”

The clerk was holding a second rug that Schwartz wanted to put on hold so she could pick it up on Dec. 1. She told the clerk she was going on “vacation.”

But the clerk never saw Schwartz put the other rug in her bag, and there was no discussion of it.

Schwartz placed the bag with the rug in it on the floor out of sight as soon as the clerk returned to the counter.

The rug in her tote bag was a Germantown Navajo saddle blanket that was not for sale.

“I collect Navajos,” Jensen said. “It was one of my personal collection items.”

He said the rug is valued between $800 and $1,500.

According to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Germantown blankets were made by Navajo weavers with brightly colored, commercially made yarn from wool mills around Germantown, Pennsylvania, that was shipped west by railroad.

Schwartz — a land-use planning, policy and government affairs consultant — served on the Planning Commission for 12 years, and has run unsuccessfully for Santa Barbara mayor and City Council.

Her mother, the late Naomi Schwartz, was a former Santa Barbara County First District supervisor and a revered local elected official for two decades.

Jensen said Schwartz has been a customer since 2017, but that “I can’t say right now that we will be servicing her items” going forward.

He called the entire incident “quite deflating.”

“I have never had a rug stolen from the front of my shop,” he said. “We hang rugs in front of our shop all the time.”

Jensen called the incident “a live-and-learn situation.”

When Schwartz returned the rug nearly two months later, he added, she told him she had been “borrowing it.”

“It was not something I would have imagined in a million years,” Jensen said.

Star Rug Cleaners, at 26 E. Cota St., was founded nearly 102 years ago, in 1921. Jensen has owned the store since 2012 when he took over from his father, who bought the business in 1988.

Lucrezia DeLeon, communications director for the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County, told Noozhawk it was likely that Schwartz would not be returning Noozhawk’s calls seeking comment.

On Friday, Schwartz did speak with the leadership of the organization, which supports women in politics.

The board leadership — including president Suzanne Cohen and first vice president Laura Capps — and others met Friday to talk about the situation, and DeLeon said Schwartz had resigned from the board.

“At this time, Deborah Schwartz is no longer serving as treasurer or on the board of directors of Democratic Women,” the board said in a statement.

“We have no other comment.”