Air conditioner thieves strike local non-profit

RIVIERA BEACH, FL -- Employees at The Arc tell NewsChannel 5 that it will cost them about $19,980 to replace the five air conditioning units stolen Wednesday from the school. 

Since the story first aired on WPTV, local air conditioning businesses and members from the community have been contacting The Arc to offer assistance.

---

---

 

RIVIERA BEACH, FL -- It's just another day at school for the 30 students inside The ARC's Riviera Beach school.

The ARC is a school where children with developmental disabilities learn to walk and to talk.

The students are doing just fine, but the grown-ups who work down the hall -- the ones who make the place and its programs run -- are working without air conditioning because someone stole it.

Director of Maintenance, Dave McCallum, arrived to work Wednesday morning to find four air conditioner units gone.

"I went outside the back door to take a look at the drains and kind of like oh my god, no wonder why we got no cold air," says McCallum.

ARC employees say, like other non-profits, they're already hurting due to public funding cutbacks and a decline in donations.

Employees say it'll cost well over $10,000 dollars to replace the units.

"After all the deductibles and that actually can impact the bottom line to the point where we might have to consider a part time furloughs, part time staff layoffs... I hope not," says ARC Advancement Director, Kim Hanson.

Many people are wondering why someone would want to steal A-C units. Apparently the bad guys have their eyes on the copper tubing and coil pieces within the a-c units.

"They sell the copper for scrap just to get a few dollars," says John Parks with John C. Cassidy Air Conditioning.

Parks and Riviera Beach police officers, we're told, were at the school all morning.

Parks says The ARC will have to replace both the interior and exterior units replaced, which is quite a project for a place that already has its hands full.

"The ARC is taking care of our most vulnerable members and these folks don't deserve to have this kind of impact," says Hanson.

"We'll pull through it, but it's just unfortunate," says McCallum.

"It's bad enough they do stuff like this, but to an organization that's here to help people is pretty sad," adds McCallum.

If you would like to make a donation to The ARC to help out with A-C repairs, click here or call (561) 842-3213.

---

---