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Stolen food bank van found in Portland Monday Jan 2, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Jane Stebbins The Curry Coastal Pilot Mary Boshart, director of the Brookings-Harbor Community Helper Food Bank, didn’t have much hope of ever seeing the food bank’s stolen van again, but it was found Wednesday — parked about 340 miles away on a busy street in downtown Portland. “Visibly, it’s in good shape,” Boshart said. “The handtruck, the scales are still in there; the graphics are still on it. The police departments need to decide who’s going to do the forensics on it.” The 2015 van was stolen from outside the food bank between 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 14, along with a laptop computer, a volunteer’s bicycle, $17 from a donation jar, and an array of food. “I don’t have any hope of (recovering the van),” Boshart said Wednesday. “When they peel the (logos) off, it becomes a plain, white van. You see lots of them around. It’s probably stripped in the bushes somewhere or went to Mexico and was resold.” But at noon, Portland businessman Robert Strouts called her and the police to say he’d spotted the van parked on Yamhill Street in Portland. “He’d seen the vehicle with these food bank decals parked there for a number of days,” said Brookings police Lt. Donny Dotson. “He thought, ‘What is this Brookings food bank? It raised his suspicions — the doors were open — it got him interested, he did some research on the food bank that led him to some (news) stories about it, and he reported it.” Dotson said the crime lab in Portland is testing for fingerprints and analyzing blood in the van from a laceration the perpetrator might have suffered from breaking a window at the food bank. Police have no suspects in the burglary and theft. The good news is they get their van back,” Dotson said. “As far as I know, it wasn’t destroyed.” The incident has brought Boshart a renewed faith in humanity. Upon hearing about the burglary and theft earlier this month, the community rallied to help. “It’s incredible,” Boshart said. “The amount of food, the amount of donations? We’re fine. There were so many people who donated, I can’t afford the postage to send them all thank-you notes. There’s literally hundreds of them. I’ve never gone out and asked for help before, didn’t really expect much, and boy was I surprised. I was just shocked.” Someone gave her a laptop, the city of Brookings lent her its park ranger van, two local businesses contributed to repairing doors and windows, and thousands of dollars and food donations poured through the doors. She has about a month’s worth of food — amazing in itself, she said, because the food bank serves tons of food to those in need each month. “And the money, I can stretch,” Boshart said. “But my shelves were empty, my bank account was empty; we were in bad shape. We’re fine now. We can make do with what we’ve got.” The community — and now the recovery of the van — turned her holiday season into a much-needed merry one. “A merry Christmas to all the people who need us,” Boshart said. “They call, ‘We know what happened to the food bank; do you have any food left?’ You bet. We’re up and running.”