UPDATE:
On its Facebook page, Treats 4 Our Troops says it has secured a rental car and will resume local deliveries before Christmas.
They have no updates on the stolen van.
Wednesday – 12/21/2011, 8:14am ET
ARLINGTON, Va. – A van full of care packages meant for deployed troops and wounded warriors was stolen earlier this week during a rash of thefts in Arlington.
The founder of Treats 4 Our Troops had a van full of gifts stolen outsid her Arlington home between Monday night and Tuesday morning.
“It was packed up with some treats for our troops that were being mailed overseas to deployed troops as well as taken to wounded warriors recovering in Bethesda and at Fort Belvoir,” says Yael Roggen, the founder of the organization.
Arlington County Police say 12 other vehicles in the neighborhood also had items taken from them, including GPS devices.
Police say all the vehicles were unlocked at the time of the thefts.
Roggen’s organization, which collects and distributes surplus Halloween candy to troops, says she’s “very disappointed.”
“We had a community all the way from California to Massachusetts mobilized to collect this candy,” she says. “Now, we have a community searching for this van.”
Roggen says in addition to the gifts, a debit card was stolen from the van. It has since been used in Bowie.
When WTOP spoke to Roggen, she had some choice words for the party or parties responsible for the thefts.
“I would tell them that we’ve collected this candy for men and women who serve and sacrifice so that we can be home with our families and celebrate,” she says. “This is just shameful at any time of year but especially right now.”
The van is a gold 2007 Honda Odyssey. It has a Support our Troops vanity plate with the letters T4OT2.
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(Copyright 2011 by WTOP. All rights reserved.)
