Help a small business recover from tragic robbery
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On Thursday, the 10th, my team and I packed up our truck and Uhaul full of equipment, luggage and good spirits and headed off to Houston, Tx to photograph another great figure skating event. We left Dallas around 11:45am and after four and a half long, traffic filled hours, we arrived In Houston. My mom, Megan, and Tracey headed out to dinner and promised to bring home dinner for Peyton, Jacob and myself. They ended up getting back around 7:30pm that night and like promised, brought us dinner. They then parked our truck and trailer in the parking lot. Knowing that we had a full day ahead of us, we all went to our respective rooms and went to bed around 10pm.
On Friday, the 11th, Peyton and I woke up around 7:30am, quickly got ready for work and left our room for the lobby where we met the rest of our team for a quick breakfast. On our way to the rink, we stopped for gas and Peyton, Jacob and I went inside to grab some drinks. As we were walking out, I noticed that the trailer door was open. I asked my mom if she was getting something out of the trailer and in shock, she told me no. Instantly I panicked, I thought we lost some stuff on the road; the reality however, was worse. I instantly noticed that the big computer boxes were missing and my mom saw that the cameras were gone. Slowly we started to notice more and more things missing. Tracey then noticed that the lock was missing completely. We closed the trailer and drove the same route back to the hotel, hopeful that we would find the equipment we’ve spent years accumulating. No such luck; we had been robbed. They had rustled through everything. They left bags open and tossed about, it was extremely evident that they searched through everything.Tracey immediately got on the phone with the police while Megan started talking to the lady at the front desk. Peyton, Jacob and I went through the trailer and tried to get a better idea of everything that was missing. When we reconvened, my mom told us that there were no cameras in the lot we were parked in. Realizing it was now 8:45 am and we had to be at the event in less than 3 hours, we went into overdrive. Everyone was working together to try to find a camera rental place near by, figure out a way to process all of our photos and videos, and find a way to make this competition happen. We found a camera shop that opened at 9am that was about 21 miles away and we booked it. At this point I honestly think it still had yet to kick in for any of us. Realizing that there was a whole club of people expecting and relying on us, as our video cameras run one of their judging systems, I called the club’s president and informed her of what had happened. She was quick to offer us help in any way and offered us a few laptops, she even knew someone with a photography camera. She was very gracious and said she’ll see us when we get there. At roughly 9:45am we got to the rental shop to see if they had anything we can use. Luckily they had some photo and video cameras, however no one on our team was familiar with the camera system or how to operate it. On the 30 minute drive back, Jacob and I tried to quickly familiarize ourselves with the cameras. At 10:54, six minutes before the start of the first event, we ran through the doors, desperate to set up our hauled-together equipment. Several people were quick to help us adapt and adjust on the spot and we started shooting. Meanwhile on the other end of our team: Megan, Tracey, Peyton and a few club members started setting up the laptops that were loaned to us and connected them to our storage system that, luckily, was left behind.
On Friday the 11th we lost:
2 gaming computers, towers, keyboards and mice
2 video cameras, mics, capture cards, tripods & 1 rented video camera
5 cannon photo cameras, lenses, battery extenders & its rolling camera case
3 pocket wizards and tether cables
5 MacBook laptops, thunderbolt adapters & its pelican rolling case
Multiple SD cards
And to top it off $5 from our cash box
That night, when we got to the hotel, everyone was shaken. I don’t think any of us could fall asleep before 1am if at all. We’ve spent the last 5 years building ourselves and our brand to what it was. Through countless trials and errors, sleepless nights, long travel days, long work days; we’ve all poured everything we’ve had into this company, it’s our baby. To see someone take it all away in one night is just devastating.
We ask for your help today in rebuilding our company so we can get back on our feet, especially before our upcoming events. We would like to thank everyone who was in Houston with us and helped us through this unforeseen tragedy. Everything y’all loaned us helped tremendously and your kind words and hugs were a comfort to our wounds. To all of our friends and family, thank y’all for the kind words and prayers. Absolutely anything and everything helps and we thank you for taking some time to listen to our story.
Co-organizers (4)
Kaitlyn Toohey
Organizer
The Colony, TX
Megan Toohey
Beneficiary
Megan Toohey
Co-organizer
Peyton Cotto
Co-organizer
Tracey Clifton
Co-organizer