A Vancouver man was sentenced Friday to five months in jail for stealing a travel trailer that serves as home for an 83-year-old man.
Albert W. Martofel, 42, pleaded guilty to first-degree theft Friday in Clark County Superior Court. He entered an Alford plea, acknowledging that a jury could find him guilty of the crime but not admitting to it. In exchange, Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Nisle dismissed charges of first-degree possession of stolen property and residential burglary.
The trailer’s owner, Bill Laubach, parked the trailer in the Walgreens parking lot at Northeast Andresen Road and Fourth Plain Boulevard on Sept. 26 and walked across the street to McDonald’s.
When he walked back outside at about 2:30 p.m., he saw a white man, about 5 feet 7 inches tall, hook the trailer up to a Chevrolet pickup and drive away. Laubach said he started running after the vehicle but couldn’t catch up. Vancouver police later responded but also did not locate the man or the trailer.
A person who had read about the stolen 1966 Aloha trailer in The Columbian spotted the trailer and called 911 at 11:45 p.m. Oct. 1 to report that it was at 219 N.W. 68th St., according to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.
Martofel was found inside the trailer and arrested on suspicion of multiple crimes.
Clark County sheriff’s deputies recovered the trailer and returned it to Laubach.
During his hearing Friday, Martofel claimed that he bought the trailer from an individual and didn’t know that it was stolen.
He told his mother that he had purchased the trailer at the Portland Auto Auction, according to court records.
“This would have been a hotly contested case at trial,” said Martofel’s attorney, Nicholas Wood.
Judge John Nichols expressed some skepticism about Martofel’s story and sentenced him to the high end of the standard sentencing range of two to six months of confinement.
Laubach, who spends winters in Arizona and summers in Washington, has been living out of the trailer. The trailer has a personalized Arizona license plate with the letters “MIHOME.”
Laubach reportedly is in Arizona for the winter, where he lives at a free campsite, but his friend Donnell Keith of Portland attended Friday’s hearing.
“The trailer is worth only $600 to $700, but it meant a lot more,” Keith said. “It meant his life. The emotional impact on this senior citizen is far beyond a simple theft.
“He has very little income so he has to live on the edge of poverty, and he eats tacos and hamburgers and drinks free coffee just to get by month to month.”
