Kalispell police are searching for a woman who robbed a clerk at the Blue and White Motel at gunpoint late Tuesday night.

According to Detective Myron Wilson, the woman, who was wearing a scarf over her hair and black netting over her face, entered the motel at about 11:30 p.m. and stuck a gun in the clerk’s face.

She then handed the clerk a black purse to fill with money from the till — the amount of which was not disclosed — and took a wallet from another employee.

The clerk described the woman as a blonde in her mid-20s, about 5 feet 3 inches tall.

“We are currently following up on leads,” Wilson said. “No arrests have been made, but several people have been detained and questioned.”

Police have found the vehicle the woman was driving. The vehicle, which previously had been reported stolen, was located in the parking lot of the Scoreboard Pub.

It has been processed and evidence recovered from inside. Some of that evidence will be forwarded to the state crime lab for analysis, a process that could take days or months.

“It’s still really preliminary,” Wilson said of the investigation.

Blue and White Motel owner Winnie Storli said she couldn’t be more proud of her employees for how they handled the incident. She especially lauded the clerk, who was working her very first shift at the motel.

“They took the license plate number down, and the woman had a mask of some sort, but they were able to give cops a description of her scarf or whatever she was wearing,” Storli said.

Storli shared her sense that lawlessness in the area seems to be mounting, but noted that her business had escaped any major incidents for a long time with the exception of Tuesday’s robbery.

“Many, many years ago we had a robber come in with a knife — this was about 40 years ago,” Storli said. “He didn’t get away with anything because the receptionist was hysterical and screamed and screamed, so he ran away.”

As for this week’s incident, Storli said several things indicated to her that the robber wasn’t working with a full deck of cards.

“She seems so stupid,” she said of the robber. “She did it with the lights on, and actually parked the car so the license plate could be seen. I wonder if the person was on drugs or something like that. And it was a woman too, it’s baffling. Obviously she wasn’t an experienced robber.”

But with her staff safe and police on the case, Storli is content, at least for the moment.

“All’s well that ends well,” she said.

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.