POWAY, Calif. (KGTV) — The community rallied to help Poway High students after thieves broke into a storage shed on campus and stole $3,000-$5,000-worth of tools used by the school's class teaching skills from the construction industry.
“It’s never a good feeling any time that theft happens, especially when we’re talking about student programs," said Jeremy Martin of the Poway Unified School District. "These tools are used every day by 100 students. It definitely took the wind out of our sails for a second.”
The course is part of PUSD's career pathways program, where students get hands-on experiences to develop skills that could help inspire a future career. At Poway High's construction class, advanced students are building "tiny homes," including plumbing and electric work, which will eventually be auctioned to the public as ADUs.
Surveillance video provided to ABC 10News by the district shows what appears to be two people casing the area on the night of April 1st. As of the deadline for this story, the San Diego Sheriff's Department has yet to respond to ABC 10News' inquiry about any leads in the case.
Martin says he was initially worried that different student accommodations would have to be found. However, donations have poured into the Poway High Foundation. On top of that, Martin says local construction companies, which have been consultants to the class since its inception, quickly volunteered to replace the stolen tools.
“As soon as they heard, it didn’t take but hours to get them reaching out to us to say how can we help," Martin said.
According to Martin, the class procured enough equipment to resume normal operations within three days of the theft.
“It’s definitely nice to know someone has our backs. That’s cool," Poway High freshman Logan Eisele told ABC 10News during class on Monday. "It’s definitely nice knowing that the community cares. Especially with something like, a lot of people would say we don’t need a construction class because it’s not an important course, but it’s nice to know that people care about us having opportunities to learn more stuff," said fellow student Caelan Wood.
