Dublin Church Nursery School Burglarized Twice in Two Days

DUBLIN – A long-standing church nursery school in Dublin was robbed twice in the space of two days this week while closed due to COVID, resulting in the theft of thousands of dollars worth of school materials, d electronics, toys and even diapers, a school official mentioned.

Someone broke into Resurrection Lutheran Chuch’s child development program facility on Amador Valley Boulevard on Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. and stole electronic devices including Amazon Fire tablets, a speaker smart Amazon Alexa, USB keys, as well as several tools, according to Erika. Hidley, the school’s vice principal.

“Stealing from children breaks my heart,” Hidley said in an interview Thursday. Hidley said she and the school’s principal, Wazhma Masarweh, noticed someone they didn’t recognize while watching school security camera footage around 10:30 a.m. Sunday, and once he discovered the theft, they called the police.

Hidley said a man suspected of the crime was arrested shortly after and personal effects were recovered.

“So we felt violated, but pretty good,” Hidley said.

But the troubled week was not over.

On Tuesday morning, while Masarweh was on campus with a handyman fixing a door frame that had been smashed in Sunday’s burglary, she discovered another burglary had occurred on Monday evening.

“She walked in and everything was a disaster,” Hidley said.

“There were stolen tablets, cellphones and office supplies,” she said. “They stole my brand new drill and sander, they took a bunch of tools.”

The thief(s) also located the keys to a locked cabinet containing a teacher’s gift cards and took them, along with several other keys, into the facility.

“We had a lot of stolen keys, so the whole facility is currently being re-keyed,” Hidley said. She also said that many cupboards and drawers had been damaged by the apparent theft and part of the carpet appeared to have been covered in a smelly liquid.

“They even stole diapers, they stole toys,” she said.

“It’s just disgusting,” Courtney Treffkorn of San Ramon said of the theft Thursday in an interview.

Treffkorn’s 3-year-old son attends school, and Treffkorn has started a GoFundMe Online Fundraising for school after hearing about what happened. By Thursday afternoon, he had accumulated just over $2,200 on a target of $7,000.

“They are so wonderful,” she said of the teachers and principals at the school.

“I literally started crying because someone has to stand up for the good people who are trying to help our kids,” she said.

Treffkorn said part of the reason she chose the nonprofit religious school for her son was because it felt like a close-knit community. The church is known throughout the city, even to people who don’t attend, because of the bells it rings every day, she said.

“They didn’t deserve all this craziness to happen,” she said. “They are already working with the wants and needs of these children, teachers and classrooms.”

It is not yet clear who is responsible for the second theft, Hidley said.

“We let the police take control right now. We just try to make lists of anything that’s been stolen or damaged,” she said. Hidely said she hopes the insurance will cover many of the expenses, including re-keying work and replacing what wasn’t found, which could total more than $10,000.

Masarweh, the headmistress, said school staff were already grappling with “the tornado of COVID” and her senior staff planned to spend much of this week while the school was closed planning how to bring back children and teachers safely next week.

“The fact that the robberies are happening one after another has taken us a bit by surprise,” Masarweh said.

Although the preschool has installed a few cameras and other security devices, she said she and other staff never felt unsafe there, attached to a church that exists in the community. since the 1960s.

“Something like this has never happened,” she said.

“Who thinks of breaking into a church, let alone a preschool that’s part of it?” she asked.

Now part of her plan for the future is to strengthen the school’s surveillance and security systems, she said.

“It’s so discouraging,” she said.

“I’m always in a whirlwind. I want to go back to what we planned to do, which is to bring our students back safely. »