Clatsop and Pacific county people escaped major damage when Barefoot Bandit Colton Harris-Moore passed through this spring like a criminal cyclone.

If authorities are right, Harris-Moores footprints in our area include leaving a $100 donation at a veterinary clinic in Raymond, Wash., stealing a high-priced fishing boat in Ilwaco, Wash., and abandoning it undamaged at the Warrenton Marina on June 1, followed by taking a 2010 Dodge Journey from the Hertz car rental agency at the Astoria Regional Airport in Warrenton on June 2. It was later recovered in Dayton.

Harris-Moore was both surprisingly lucky and conscientious in managing to get the $450,000 Fat Cat across the river in the middle of the night. His crime spree could easily have ended with his death in the Columbia, or with being rescued by the Coast Guard from a shoal. Good people might have needed to place their own lives at risk to save him.

He caused short-lived but presumably acute worry to boat owner Larry Johnson, who noticed the vessels absence when he checked for it on the Port of Ilwacos webcam from his home in the Olympia, Wash., area. As it turned out, Harris-Moore managed to pull into a slip at Warrenton so gently he didnt wake a live-aboard who was sleeping 10 feet away. He neatly recoiled the boats ropes and returned the key to its ineffective hiding place.

As blatant criminality goes, this all counts as relatively well-mannered behavior. But Harris-Moore disrupted hundreds of lives over the course of two years, stealing and sometimes damaging property valued at about $2 million. Unlike Johnson, not everyone came away from their encounters with Harris-Moore with their Fat Cats intact. And taxpayers are out untold sums of money pursuing, prosecuting and jailing him. His capture in the Bahamas was especially dangerous.

It would be ignoring the obvious not to acknowledge the entertaining aspects of all this. People have always had a fascination with criminals with such panache. Harris-Moores flamboyant manner and reckless courage are cinematic, but not to be encouraged.

St. Nicholas, who morphed into Santa Claus, was once known as the patron saint of thieves not because he aided their misdeeds, but because he is supposed to have helped them repent and mend their ways. It would be nice to think that St. Nick deserves credit for reports indicating that Harris-Moore may want to cut a deal that parlays profits from marketing his story into a restitution fund for his victims.

This has its risks. We do not want to spawn a career path in which young people commit crimes to gain financially valuable notoriety. But if such a deal can be structured in a way that sees Harris-Moore still spends serious hard time behind bars and does not profit himself while making his victims whole, its worth considering.

As a final note, it is reprehensible for Harris-Moores attorney to say, Ill bankrupt them to small counties that do not forego prosecuting his client. It is an unfortunate happenstance when a 19-year-old bandit has far more class than his lawyer.