South Okanagan/Similkameen branch of the BC SPCA have been recently targeted by thieves.
According to the branch, there have been a series of break-ins to their sea can located on the Penticton property. The container usually stores bottles and cans for their recycling program.
“But the crooks are a bit more pushy these days and so what they’ve done is they’re coming along and cutting cords and just ruining things and helping themselves all at nighttime.”
The money raised from the recycling program goes directly to helping animals.
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“This is our major thing. So to have people coming in and stealing from us — we’re just trying to help the animals, that’s very important to us,” said Hansen.
“We have about 500 different items in here right now. A lot of those things are we can use within a week. Others we have to wait get a good amount, but we were picking up all the time, delivering money all the time. We store and we earn about $40,000 each year on this.”
Following the recent break-ins, the SPCA made a call out for help to the community. Officials with the SPCA say they were blown away by the community response that followed.
The container has been secured with a new lock which was installed by three welders who donated their time to the organization.
“I very much appreciate the three people that came and did the work on this to lock this up,” added Hansen.
“When the crooks come this is locked to them, they can’t see that and this slows them down. The big stuff we’ve got to protect that, that’s our money, that’s our money for the animals and that’s important for us.”
And a hole in the organization’s fence, where the thieves’ allegedly gained access to the yard, was repaired on Monday.
In the meantime, RCMP is aware of the incidents and will work closely with the SPCA moving forward.
“I worked with the RCMP. They said they’re going to put some special attention in our neighbourhood here and that’s exactly what they did,” said Hansen.