Thief steals Santa yard ornament

A theft in early December is making this Christmas season darker for Peggy Boothe.

Sometime on the night of Dec. 6, her wire light-up Santa Claus yard ornament disappeared from her small front yard in Hillyard.

“I just loved him,” she said. “I bought him, oh, three or four years ago, and of course I can’t find anything like him now.

“It’s very disheartening.”

Boothe, 53, was born and raised in Spokane, and has lived in her home on East Diamond in the Hillyard neighborhood for 19 years.

She always wanted to decorate her house for Christmas growing up, but her family didn’t have the money to do it. It didn’t get easier later, while she raised a son by herself.

But she finally got to start decorating her place in the early 1990s, once her house was paid for and she started making a little more at her job.

“My decorations were all part of a magic Christmas for me,” she said. “It felt magic just because it made people happy, and it made me happy to see lights in my yard.”

But with her Santa missing, “I can’t tell you how disheartening it is,” she said.

Thinking of someone else enjoying the decoration this holiday season doesn’t make it any easier.

“It’s hard to take consolation in someone else enjoying my Santa,” she said. “I don’t know how anyone could even think of enjoying something like that.”

Now she won’t leave her other light-up ornament, a rocking horse, out overnight.

“I’m scared to death someone will take it,” she said.

Boothe said the rest of the neighborhood decorations seem untouched.

“Nobody else’s stuff has been tampered with. No lights broken, no nothing.”

Boothe has offered a reward, with no questions asked, for the return of her Santa.

“It’s taking away more than just an ornament,” she said. “It’s taking away a spirit. That was my way of sharing my Christmas spirit with the people of Spokane, and then to have it taken away, it’s just very sad.”

If you have information on the missing Santa ornament, please call Peggy Boothe at 487-7522.