Someone has ended up on the naughty list this holiday season. A Grinch in real life, potentially.
Almost $3,000 worth of extension cords and electrical equipment were stolen from the Weed Park light display Christmas night (sometime after 5:30 p.m.) and Muscatine is asking for the community’s support to help them get back on track to light up the neighborhood. Organizers are starting to reassess the damages and figure a plan to try and get the lights back running on Friday.
“Muscatine is an incredible community and they really support local nonprofits and there’s a lot of heart in this town, despite what one or maybe two people tried to do to tear this thing down,” Marc Hines, CEO of Crossroads, the event’s organizer, said Wednesday. “It’s really apparent to us that this community is behind us and will be for some time to come.”
According to the Crossroads Facebook page, the cost of repair will far exceed how much was actually stolen. They say on their Facebook page that “physical damages and losses from theft will exceed $2,000.”
Crossroads helps seniors and people with disabilities to access “lives they want, with care they deserve,” according to the group website.
Organizers told Our Quad Cities News that around 80 percent of the light display is not in operation.
“We could have easily of gotten angry, gotten bitter about it,” Hines said. “But we spent about five minutes doing that and since then it has been all about how do we recover. How do we recoup and how do we show this town why we are here.”
“I think it hit everybody the same way as it hit me,” light display organizer Megan Francis said. “So everybody that’s come out to volunteer, everybody that has already driven through felt the same pain I did.”
Organizers say people went out of their way to show support through financial donations and donated extension cords. They say it has helped overshadow the heartbreak and pain they experienced once they discovered the damage. They also say a local anonymous donor has agreed to pay and replace all of the stolen and damaged electrical equipment.
“We immediately got very positive feedback, which kind of reinforced why we did this in the first place,” Hines said. “Muscatine is an incredible community.”
“I’ve had calls to my personal cell phone, my office phone, about what we can do to get this up and running,” he added. “I think people understand one what an asset this installation is to the community. I mean it brings a lot of joy to folks.”
“I think people really understand the harm that was done and the help they can potentially provide to make sure that this isn’t the note that we go out on,” Hines said.
To help with Friday’s reopening, organizers are asking for volunteers to come out on Friday and help rewire the show, collect donations, and direct traffic.
“I expect there to be long waits,” Hines said. “If you come out on Friday, we ask for your patience because we expect Muscatine to come out in droves.”
The display opened over Thanksgiving weekend and they hope to have it reopen one last weekend, Friday and Saturday nights, Dec. 29-30. The $10-per-person donation supports over 600 seniors and people with disabilities in Muscatine and Tipton.
To donate to the light display, visit the Crossroads website HERE.
