LONDON, ONT. -- They thought they would never see it again, but on Wednesday morning much of the equipment used by Vitalpoint Church for its Sunday services was back.
"We didn't expect to get our gear back. I mean, I figured it was totally gone.” It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks for Pastor Ron Baker and other members of the Vitalpoint congregation.
On Monday of last week it was discovered someone had broken off a security device on the trailer stored at their Hyde Park head office and the thieves had driven away with the trailer and all its contents - almost everything needed to conduct Sunday services.
Vitalpoint is a portable church, holding services at St. Andre Bessette Catholic High School in London and simulcasting to South Huron District Secondary School in Exeter.
On Wednesday of last week, just two days after the trailer went missing, social media friends helped identify the trailer after it was listed for sale on Kijiji out of Strathroy.
An arrest was made and the trailer was recovered but, unfortunately, it was empty.
Then on Tuesday of this week another turn, Baker received a call from the owner of storage units near Strathroy.
"What is really amazing about this is that it was the CTV News that linked the gear. The gentleman that saw the gear in the storage unit put it together. He remembered seeing the newscast and he immediately contacted us and sure enough we went looking and it was ours."
“It gives you some satisfaction that, you know, you did the right thing," says Casey van der Linden owns Form-A-Fence, a company located on Egremont Drive near Strathroy.
The company does vinyl claddings for fences and decks, but van der Linden also has storage lockers on the property.
One of his long-time tenants has video surveillance that alerts him by phone when there is late-night movement around the yard.
“He got a notification that there's activities down here. So I thought, 'Three o'clock in the morning? No! That's not right.'"
Van der Linden already had suspicions about his new tenants and when he checked the contents of their unit he discovered the church's items and called Baker.
“They were so pleased. Yeah, they were so pleased, and I was pleased for them."
The church did have an anti-theft tongue lock on the trailer but Baker says they'll be absorbing additional expenses to upgrade security measures, "With GPS tracking systems and high-end tongue locks and all that, we've been talking a lot about that."
One other bit of good news, some of the church's drum mics were found in a Tillsonburg storage locker. While most of the items are back, some higher-end electronic items are still missing and the church will be turning to insurance to cover those losses.
