Question: We received a phone call to donate items to Big Brothers Big Sisters, and we put our items outside our home on a Saturday morning. About 30 minutes after we left out our bags of items clearly labeled for BBBS, a blue van stopped next to our donation. As I approached the van, it took off down the street. About 15 minutes later we saw a white van stop outside our house. When the BBBS truck came by later in the morning, nothing was left for them to pick up. I am now concerned; how did these two vans know to come to my house on the day of the BBBS pickup? We live in a residential area with not much outside street traffic, so we know when unfamiliar cars come into the neighborhood. It is highly unlikely that these vans were just driving by on this day.
Answer: The Big Brothers Big Sisters organization knows there are people in vans or cars who drive around neighborhoods looking for donations placed curbside, but says it’s not because it publicizes its pickups.
When BBBS trucks make their rounds, there are some streets where “everything is out on the curbside or out by the mailbox with our tag on it,” said Louisa Theodore, operations manager. “So it’s not like we had given anybody (the schedule) or there’s a place where they can go online to see who’s donating today.”
But the trucks are on a regular pickup schedule, so it wouldn’t be difficult for those keeping track to figure out when donations would be left out for their unauthorized taking.
Theodore said BBBS gets complaints like yours periodically, “and it happens in every neighborhood, not one specific neighborhood.”
When BBBS initially received complaints from donors about this, it contacted the Honolulu Police Department and was told “the donor has to call because they’re stealing from them,” Theodore said.
“There’s nothing they could do for us.”
HPD says it doesn’t know whether the snatchers are “organized or opportunists.”
But even if a donor were to contact HPD, it would be “difficult to initiate a theft case” against someone taking items left at the curb, said HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu. That’s even if the items were marked for a charity.
According to HPD, “thieves” could argue that because the items were left on the curb, they were unwanted property even if designated.
Yu recommended not leaving items of “high value” at the curb, and to either make special arrangements for pickup by the charity or take it directly to them.
That’s advice BBBS also gives.
“We recommend that people put (items) closer to the house, the front door or garage so that it’s not as visible,” Theodore said, noting that crews don’t only pick up donations left at the curb.
Just be sure to let them know where you’re placing the donated items.
Question: Is the Department of Public Safety still accepting paperback books for Oahu prison inmates’ library? If so, any contact phone number?
Answer: Donations of leisure reading books are still being accepted by the Department of Public Safety’s Library Services Office, said Acting Program Officer Janice Kalua.
Call her at 587-1273 to make arrangements, or drop your donations off at her office at 919 Ala Moana Blvd., Room 405. Books on any topic are welcome, preferably paperbacks. They’re distributed at all the state’s prison facilities.
MAHALO
To Val and the other helpful Oceanic Time Warner Cable technical support ladies who, over the telephone, get our televisions working again, sometimes with an added amenity (such as captions for this combat-hearing-impaired veteran in response to the wife’s perpetual “too loud” complaint). Their technical abilities continue to astound me. — Lewis Hitchcock
_________
Write to "Kokua Line" at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
