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November 21, 2008 Patterson, CA

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Church thief swipes instruments, electronics

Written by John Saiz / Patterson Irrigator /

Wednesday, 19 December 2007

A thief took thousands of dollars worth of electronics and music equipment from Patterson Covenant Church this past weekend.

Sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, someone broke into the church at 435 W. Las Palmas Ave., stealing guitars, keyboards, speakers, televisions and computers.

“They stole a lot of musical items. It’s pretty substantial,” church secretary Jennifer Nelson said. “It’s going to take us a while to get back to where we were, but we’ll be OK.”

She went to the church at about 7 a.m. Monday and found that someone had been in the building.

“I was just running in to drop off a note because I was sick,” Nelson said.

Lights were on, and several of the inside doors were busted open. Nelson remained in disbelief.

“I didn’t want to come to the realization that something like this would happen,” she said.

Eventually, it became clear that someone had broken into the church.

“Obviously, there was something wrong,” Nelson said.

Looking for clues: County crime analyst technician D. Kirk dusts for fingerprints inside Patterson Covenant Church on Las Palmas Avenue. Thieves broke into the sanctuary during the week and stole thousands of dollars in equipment. Photo by Elias Funez

Nelson called 9-1-1, and police arrived and made sure no one was in the building. Then, crime-scene investigators showed up to hunt down any clues. The results of their investigation were not available early this week.

Nelson said she had no idea who might have committed the crime. The thief left a mess inside, but there were no signs of forced entry.

What is known is that the theft happened either late Sunday night or early Monday morning, because the church had just had a performance Sunday evening.

“From such a high (Sunday) night to come in this morning and find everything a mess, it’s pretty disheartening,” Nelson said.

People were at the church until about 10 p.m. Sunday, she said.

Sgt. Joe Camarda of Patterson Police Services, who has worked in Patterson for almost 25 years, said burglaries happen at local churches about as often as they do at businesses.

Nelson thinks this is the second time Patterson Covenant Church has been burglarized. After she discovered the theft, others mentioned a similar event about 10 years ago.

On Monday, workers at the church tried to put together a list of stolen items for insurance. While the losses should be covered, it will take some time before the items will be replaced.

In the meantime, the church has plans to adjust some of its programs. Next weekend’s performance will be hymns accompanied by a piano.

“Hymns sound best on a piano, anyways,” Nelson said.

The loss of the television sets, used to post the lyrics of worship music, will make it more difficult to follow the songs, but Nelson said the inconveniences would not deter the congregation.

“This takes us back a little ways,” she said, “but we don’t need material things to celebrate Christmas.”

To reach John Saiz at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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