Graziano Tecchio took it in stride when his iconic Rondout restaurant had a last-minute guest show up unannounced last Thursday, pull a gun on him and rob the joint. The robber turned out to be a local homeless man, Torrel Skinner, 41, a registered sex offender who was arrested by Kingston police two days later and charged with multiple felonies.

The perp sounds like he's plenty sordid and thoroughly unpleasant. But to hear Graziano describe the event is to hear a philosopher's appraisal of the incident; a humanist's too. The attitude somehow fits with the unaffected, welcoming style — urban rustic? — of his Downtown Café.

“He couldn't help himself,” Tecchio explained to Kingston Wire as he prepped the kitchen for dinner while we visited him over the weekend. “Alcohol, depression, mental issues — who knows? You name it.”

“We were closing and cleaning up when the fellow came in and asked about a liquor store,” he continued. “We told him there's a wine store down the street, but it's probably closed. It was just me and Cassandra, my waitress. Then he came back.”

“This is not my first, as they say, rodeo. If you're planning to rob somebody you come by and check it out first. And then you decide, 'Is this a good idea?' That's how they do it.” Tecchio had previously endured three robberies in his more than 20 years of feeding Kingston at various locations. He said his cool under fire also stems from his time in the Italian army in the ’80s.

Skinner wasn't obviously drunk or stoned or otherwise peculiar, Tecchio said. “The door was unlocked and it happened very quickly. 'I don't want to make this a murder scene,' he said.”

Skinner's haul was meager, about 70 bucks tops, most of it coming from Tecchio's waitress. (And if that isn't the lowest of the low, robbing a server of tip money!) Tecchio reimbursed the waitress out of his own pocket. But he himself is out of luck in that regard, his insurance not covering armed robbery.

“Cassandra thinks the guy had come by a few times during the summer, asking the same thing. But we were busy and he was probably scared to come back. He needs some kind of institution to keep him safe. To keep everybody safe.”