KP Cub Scouts Target of Local Thieves

Ted Olinger, KP News

Brute-force damage to Scouts’ storage trailer. Photo: Arne Sewell

A trailer containing new camping gear belonging to local Cub Scout Pack 222 was stolen from the Key Peninsula Lutheran Church parking lot at the corner of KP Highway NW and Lackey Road during the night of Oct. 29. 

“They cut the lock on the gate and came in here to get the trailer; it had a wheel boot on it and they dragged it away,” said Cubmaster Benjamin Warfield. “They probably thought it was full of tools.”

The damaged trailer was recovered about a half mile south near Jackson Lake Road NW on 38th Street NW, though its contents had been stolen.

“It had to make a lot of noise; that’s as far as they could drag it,” Warfield said. 

According to Camp Coordinator Arne Sewell, the items stolen included a new 13×13 foot Easy Pop Up tent, a three-burner Kodiak propane stove and two five-gallon propane tanks.

The trailer is a 12-foot Wells Cargo container that was donated to the pack about five years ago.

The lock was cut and the tire and wheel will need to be replaced, according to Sewell.

“It had pretty much all of our scouting supplies,” Warfield said. “Aside from being a nuisance, we just got all of our popcorn sales done and now we’ve got to replace everything we just bought. At least they didn’t destroy the whole trailer.”

“We only used all that stuff one time for our fall camp at the beginning of October at Camp Sound View,” he said.

Pack 222 guided visitors at Camp Sound View during the Farm Tour Oct. 6 as a service project and also cleaned trails and picked up “a truckload” of litter from the beach, Warfield said, and spent the night at the camp.

“Every campout includes a service project and a big camp fire, where we do songs and s’mores of course,” Warfield said. “Every den helps with cooking and preparing meals; we take an older den and younger den and work them together to do the meals. Then we had an early morning polar bear swim.”

Pack 222 includes scouts from kindergarten through fifth grade; sixth-graders can move up to Boy Scouts, according to Warfield, who has been part of the pack with his son, Ben, for two and a half years. 

“We’ve got 40 to 50 kids, and we do a lot of co-camps with the Girl Scouts,” he said. “I was in Boy Scouts and when I moved out here (to Lake Holiday) there wasn’t anything going on. I felt like if I helped join a pack out here and help foster that there’d be a better one down the line. I gained a lot from scouting.”

Vanessa Fritsch, Pack 222’s secretary, said members of the community have been eager to support the scouts after word of the theft got out. “We already have a PayPal account and we appreciate the public support; we don’t want to take advantage of anyone,” she said. The pack is looking to raise $500 to replace the stolen items and repair the trailer.

“And next time we’re going to paint ‘Pack 222’ on the side of trailer,” Warfield said, “so they know it’s not tools—it’s Cub Scout stuff.”

For more information, go to the BSA Pack 222 Facebook page.