Trailer used for homeless outreach program stolen from church parking lot

MARYSVILLE -  Police are looking for the bold thief who stole a vehicle out of a church parking lot in the middle of the day. That church now has to scramble to keep their homeless outreach efforts going.

The trailer was taken from the Marysville Church of the Nazarene sometime Saturday afternoon.

“Our volunteers showed up around 3, and I started getting phone calls that said do you have the trailer?” says lead pastor Craig Laughlin.

Church volunteers feed the homeless in downtown Marysville every Saturday night. The trailer contained all the tables, chairs and tents that volunteers use for that.

“One of the things we think is important isn’t just to feed them, but to do it with dignity. When it rains, the pop ups keep them out of the rain. They get to sit down at a table and sit in a chair and eat a meal together.”

There are no surveillance cameras in the church parking lot, so they don’t know who stole the trailer or how they got away without attracting attention from people inside the church. They’ve filed a police report. But since they don’t have the money to replace everything they lost, they’re hoping people in the community will keep a look out for the trailer.

“By the time you replace a chair, a whole bunch of tables, the trailer, the pop ups are pretty expensive. It’s going to cost a pretty significant amount of money that we don’t just have laying around.”

Volunteers filled their own cars with food and supplies so they could still feed the homeless last night.

“We’ll keep making it work, this won’t stop us in any stretch of the imagination. But it’s going to be more uncomfortable for people, it’s not going to be nearly as smooth.”

The pastor wants the thieves to know why stealing their trailer was one of the worst things they could have done.

“You stole from the least, the last and the lost, from the homeless of our community. We don’t use that for anything else except our homeless ministry. For the children and families that we minister to, you took away from them.”