STILLWATER, Minn. — There ought to be a law. Actually, there is one. But with Stillwater buried under piles of new snow, perhaps it needs to be enhanced.
“Yeah it was shocking, very shocking,” Janna Meline said Friday from Sunny Hill Pre-school where she teaches.
On Monday night, with snow in the forecast, Meline left her daughter's gymnastics practice at Stillwater High School to find the bed of her pickup truck empty.
The pickup bed where her snowblower used to be.
“I held it together until I got home and when I got home I sat in my bed and cried,” Meline said.
A little more about Meline to put those tears in perspective. After working her pre-school job, the single mother of four spends her afternoons cleaning houses. Last year she started putting a few dollars aside each paycheck to buy a used Toro snowblower she uses to clear the sidewalks at three businesses who pay her for the service.
“You've got to make the bills somehow,” Meline said.
Then, Monday night her snowblower was gone.
“I still have my hands and I have a shovel, but it certainly made my life easier,” Meline said.
Meline posted about the theft on Facebook. Within hours a cold act was met by a warm response.
Erin McQuay, one of Meline’s daycare parents, created a GoFundMe page.
“I know she needed a snowblower more than she needed justice,” McQuay said.
Within days, nearly $800 in donations poured in.
“What was remarkable was the amount of people that didn't even know Janna,” McQuay said.
It gets better.
Stillwater Ace Hardware offered to give Janna a new snowblower.
“That's what we're trying to do, reach out and try to do the best we can for our neighbors,” said Patrick Dunn, the store’s general manager.
A new Toro has been ordered. While Meline waits, store employee Bryan Parent offered her the use of an extra snowblower at home in his garage.
“I’ve been down in life before and people have helped me out, so I’m trying to pay it forward,” Parent said.
Meline could barely believe it.
“I was in shock,” she said. “I got off the phone, like, what?”
Meline will use her GoFundMe money to pay for part of the new snowblower - and spend the rest for chains, a lock and a gas can to replace the one also stolen from her truck.
The rest of the money she plans to use to help others in need.
Meline’s faith in humanity is restored. “There are a lot of good people out there,” she said.
From empty pickup bed – to full heart.