While the Moores were nestled all snug in their beds, a thief or
thieves snuck onto their property and cut one of 16 roadside
redwoods that the family decorates annually.
While the Moores were nestled all snug in their beds, a thief or thieves snuck onto their property and cut one of 16 roadside redwoods that the family decorates annually.
“You kind of lose that holiday spirit,” said Kelly Moore as she stared at the 10-inch diameter stump jutting up in her backyard. “It just makes you not want to decorate.”
The row of 20-foot redwoods lines Country Club Drive south of its intersection with Stonecress Street in northeast Gilroy, where the family’s hillside home is perched. There, a gate leads to the back porch of the family’s property, which is filled with fruit trees and grapevines – all planted by the family when they moved in five years ago.
The family, including three young girls, also planted the redwoods, which were only seven feet tall at the time. Each year, they string white lights from all 16 trees, brightening an otherwise dark stretch of street.
“We’re doing it for everybody else,” Moore said, pointing out that neighbors have commented on the beauty of the lights, which the family cannot see from their house.
The lights were already strung but not plugged in when thieves struck this weekend. During the crime, the Moores were only 50 feet away, sleeping. They had just finished cutting down their own Christmas tree – legally, at a tree farm – and decorating it.
The remaining stump is clean-cut for about six inches, then full of splintered wood and stripped bark – suggesting that the tree toppled over toward the street midway through the theft, Moore said. From the debris left on the ground and sidewalk, it appeared that the tree was dragged to the first space in a nearby parking lot and hoisted onto a vehicle. Given its height, the cut tree could have weighed 400 pounds, said Bill Blocher, sales representative at Western Tree Nursery on Hecker Pass Highway.
“It’s not a one-man operation,” he said.
The seasonal theft could cost the Moores more than $2,000 to purchase a comparable living tree and get it put in, Blocher said.
While Christmas shopping and decorating have started early this year by virtue of an early Thanksgiving, so have criminals that prey on the abundant shoppers and unguarded lawn decorations. Thieves and burglars struck at least six shoppers and their vehicles at shopping centers during the long Thanksgiving Day weekend.
The most brazen of these thefts was on Saturday when a Hispanic man, after asking another man for change for a large bill, grabbed $500 from the man’s wallet and ran away.
However, the largest haul was $3,600 in electronics – including three laptops and a PlayStation Portable – taken from a car parked outside Best Buy on Friday.
If unable to carry purchases and valuables, shoppers should put them in the trunks of their cars or cover them up, Sgt. John Sheedy said.
Otherwise, “you set yourself up as a target,” he said.
The seasonal thefts – the Moores also had an inflatable Santa stolen from the same patch of yard last Christmas – are symptoms of a changing world, Moore said.
“All that’s gone,” she said. “Everybody’s afraid and angry. You can’t let your kids out to play.
“The one (exception) was Christmas. Now, in the last two years, all my girls have seen are bad memories.”
