SPOKANE — On their final leg in a four-week-long road trip, Melissa Rekve and Paul Hetherington’s car was stolen outside the downtown Ramada by Wyndham hotel on June 29. It was packed with collectibles from their trip, personal items and most distinctly, the couple’s unique Lego creations.
Using Lego bricks as his medium, brick baron Hetherington’s award-winning art includes intricate models of miniature storefronts and plastic sci-fi scenes, some too large and heavy for one person to lift alone. All told, Hetherington estimates four to five months of work connecting bricks and about $15,000 worth of materials were lost. And that doesn’t include the priceless sentimental loss.
“The most heartbreaking part is losing the models,” Hetherington said. “A lot of these were really well-known, they really are irreplaceable. Like any art.”
“The time and money, it’s disgusting what we lost,” said Melissa Rekve, a fellow Lego brick artist.
A Lego constructor of 30 years, Hetherington has designs on display in an art exhibition at the West Vancouver Memorial Library in Canada.
The couple regularly travel to Lego shows and display their pieces. On this trip, they were on their way home from Brickworld, a convention in Chicago.
While Hetherington said the pieces hold more value as assembled fine art, the thief could theoretically disassemble the scenes and sell the pieces individually or in bulk, online or at pawn shops. On eBay, sellers list the bricks by the tubful, priced around $12 per pound for a random assortment of pieces. More collectible sets and lots of themed pieces go for more.
“I always call Lego ‘plastic gold’ because it holds its value and it’s so expensive,” Rekve said.
The couple said 141 items in the vehicle are still unaccounted for, including souvenirs and collectables from their four-week-long trip, luggage with their favorite clothes and items with personal information.
Hetherington stayed the night of June 29 at the Ramada, reassured by surveillance cameras on the property and an immobilizer in the vehicle. But that wasn’t enough to deter the Lego heist. He reported the crime the next morning and police responded that day, according to a police report.
Management at Ramada said they “weren’t allowed” to provide comment on the situation.
Signs on the property indicate the business isn’t responsible for stolen property, and urge patrons to not leave valuables unattended in their car overnight.
Rekve, who had gone home to Vancouver early, came to rescue her now car-less boyfriend.
But the harrows of their journey didn’t stop with the theft. Rekve’s car broke down in North Bend, and Hetherington rented a car out of Spokane to meet her there.
Police found the stolen Hyundai near the intersection of Lincoln Road and Morton Street in North Spokane about a week after it was stolen. The now wary couple then returned to Spokane to retrieve their vehicle and were alarmed to find it inoperative and “trashed.” Instead of a reunion with a car-full of their sentimental treasures, the couple were met with an array of drug paraphernalia, items that didn’t belong to them and a trailer hitch added to their car.
“It was appalling,” Rekve said.
Julie Humphreys, spokeswoman for the Spokane Police Department, said she didn’t know the circumstances in which police found the car, but it’s not uncommon for stolen vehicles to be “trashed” upon recovery.
It’s rare that someone steals a vehicle and only takes it on a “joy-ride.” More often, it’s used in a drug deal or stripped of parts to be sold, she said.
The couple once again left Spokane without their car and without their Legos, but were able to excavate two sentimental items amid the garbage and drug paraphernalia.
Rekve thinks given the eccentricity of their possessions, there’s a possibility the stolen items may turn up. The couple accumulated vintage toys, customized liquor bottles and one-of-a-kind clothing in the weeks of cross-country shopping.
“I know that this is not stuff that would fly under the radar. Everybody thinks we have cool stuff,” Rekve said. “It stands out and it’s not stuff that everybody owns. Most people don’t own toys — we’re unique.”
Humphreys said there’s still a chance their items will be recovered as police crime analysts look for commonalities in other thefts and sometimes uncover huge stashes of stolen property. The police haven’t identified a suspect in the theft.
The couple hasn’t stopped their search, and have enlisted the help of online Lego community sleuths to put the pieces together to solve the mystery.
“The amount of support we’ve gotten from the media, from all of our Lego friends, and the Lego fans around the world have all shared our posts, our posts have been blogged,” Hetherington said. “So that’s the good part of the story.”
