Grinches Filch Mom’s Hard-Earned Gifts Break-In Cleans Out Presents Meant For 8-Year-Old Boy

Jeannette Brockway’s Grinch guzzled a can of beer before stealing her son’s Christmas from the back seat of her truck.

Thieves trashed the inside of Brockway’s Nissan Pathfinder, which her boyfriend accidentally left unlocked one night last week. The video games, puzzles and action figures the single mother spent months saving for and all day Wednesday hunting for were gone.

“I’m just not sure what I’m going to do now,” Brockway said Saturday during a break from her job at a downtown collectibles shop. “I’m not able to replace that stuff.”

Brockway, 27, began saving near the end of the summer to buy Christmas gifts and winter clothes for her 8-year-old son, Andrew. She was careful to buy only things she needed from the grocery store and watched television instead of renting movies on the weekends.

She went from store to store searching for sales that would make the $400 she saved go the farthest.

“I wanted to have a nice Christmas for my son,” Brockway said. “I was putting aside a little each paycheck.”

Now, two weeks before Christmas, Brockway has nothing to put under the tree for her son. With rent and the power bill due this week, she can’t afford to replace the Sega video games, Tamagotchi virtual pet and Star Wars Ewok action figures.

“(Bills) are things you have to pay,” Brockway said.

The thieves entered the truck sometime after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

Brockway’s boyfriend had taken a movie back to the video store and left the truck unlocked in front of her house near 15th Street and Sherman Avenue, not knowing the Christmas loot was hidden behind the back seat.

Police collected an empty beer can from the truck they hope will lead them to the thieves. So far, it has not.

Even if police arrest the burglars, Brockway holds little hope they will find her son’s gifts.

“It makes me angry,” Brockway said. “It’s a sad thing that somebody would feel like they had to do that. It was quite apparent it was some little kid’s Christmas.”

, DataTimes