Marny Skindrud noticed something was wrong on a recent Saturday.
However, the executive director of the Lawton Food Bank didn’t have a chance to really take stock of what seemed amiss.
But, by the time Monday rolled around, Skindrud knew the food bank had been robbed.
Yet, less than a day later, with the help of the Lawton community, the missing property had been returned and Skindrud could only laugh and smile as she looked at the social media posts after the small drama that took place.
“It is so humbling to see the community support for the Food Bank,” Skindrud said. “The last I checked, I think we had almost 700 shares on that post. I think it was well over 30,000 people reached, which means people were really trying to help us find these. Again, which is amazing.”
The drama started Friday night when a truck with two people inside pulled up to the Food Bank after hours.
“They took 31 (wooden) pallets in two separate loads off of our property,” Skindrud said. “We store those pallets behind our building on the west side, close to our warehouse door, and nowhere near our trash dumpsters. Yeah, somebody took them away. We noticed it first on Saturday morning, but I was busy with a volunteer group and didn’t have a chance to look at our cameras.”
When Skindrud came back Monday, she had a chance to watch the video.
Even after she watched the video of the theft taking place, she refused to file a police report right away. But what she did do was post the video on to social media.
“I posted it on Facebook to see if anybody might know who they are, just to see if we could get them returned,” said Skindrud.
The comments and inquiries started to roll in immediately from Lawton residents. By the next day, the pallets had been returned.
“When I got into work, somebody came by and returned them. He had bought like 25 of them from the people that were in the video,” Skindrud said. “He said he wanted to make things right, so he returned them to us. Then the gentleman that had purchased them, he also brought us six other pallets, which I don’t think he had purchased just to make up the difference of all of them.”
It was a pleasant surprise for Skindrud to get the pallets back. But the surprises weren’t done. She got a call from a woman who had seen the video on the newscast and said she was involved with the theft. According to Skindrud, the caller wanted to apologize and told her it was a mistake.
“She thought that they were free or something to that extent,” Skindrud said. “Then she said she wanted to do an herb garden with them, but they also sold 25 of them.”
Normally, some old wood hidden in the back of the property wouldn’t garner much attention. However, the pallets are extremely important in how the Lawton Food Bank distributes food to residents in need.
“All of our food in our warehouse has to go on a pallet, in a cart or on shelves. We don’t store anything on the floor at all,” Skindrud said. “Everything is arranged so that it goes on pallets.
“When we also receive food from our stores that support us in the local area. So, we’ve got 10 different stores that give us food items every week.”
Those stores include Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target, Aldi, Country Marts, Cash Saver and the Commissary.
“So, the bigger ones like Walmart, Sam’s Club, and the Commissary often give us pallets,” Skindrud said. “But then we also have to take empty pallets back to them because they’re definitely worth money obviously.”
This is the first time anything has happened like this to the Lawton Food Bank in the few months Skindrud has been on the job. But, she said, it taught her a lot about what type of community the Food Bank has backing them up.
“I don’t think we’ve had pallets stolen before or at least not to that extent,” Skindrud said. “Like maybe somebody has come and grabbed one, where we wouldn’t notice it.
“Just seeing that outpouring of support from the community over this, it’s the best.”