Bogard church burglarized

WASILLA — It’s not so much the laptop computer or the $20 that Word of Faith Assembly is going to miss.

After a break-in a week ago, what’s really going to be missed are all the papers the thieves took. Some are irreplaceable, and most are things the government requires be kept on hand at the local church.

“There’s a whole lot of IRS information and church minutes. Bizarre stuff to steal, and it’s not ever going to be of any use to (the thieves),” pastor Steve Alexander said.

The documents were in the church’s safe, he said. There wasn’t any money there, though; perhaps $20, if that. Also stolen from the safe was backup software for church computers. If one goes down and staff needs to re-install Windows, for example, it’s going to be expensive without those backups.

One of the files stolen was his list of charitable organizations to steer needy parishioners to for help. It’s a list that took him five years to steadily compile.

“That’s all gone, so it’s going to take me five more years to gather it all again,” Alexander said.

Burglars managed to get into the safe, Alexander said, probably because he was careless in securing it that day. They also managed to pull the church windows open and get inside the building because the windows weren’t completely secured.

The locking pins were in place at the bottom, but the levers most windows have weren’t in the locked position. The burglars were able to pull the windows out and overcome those locking pins.

Alexander said the church on Bogard Road across from the Boys and Girls Club just hasn’t really had to worry much about security in the past. Sure, things have gone missing, but not in a break-in like this.

“I’ve had a zero-dollar security budget because hey, we lock everything,” Alexander said.

Aside from the documents, the church lost a laptop, an iPod dock with speakers and a Keurig coffee maker. That sort of stuff makes sense to steal, Alexander said, if this kind of crime can ever make sense. Thieves are usually after things they can convert to cash.

These thieves, though, were apparently also hungry.

“They took some snacks like peanut butter and my chocolate-covered almonds,” Alexander said.

As baffling as the documents, but not nearly as tough to lose, is that the burglars made off with pocket calendars and a couple dozen loose pens and mechanical pencils.

“Such a funny thing to steal,” Alexander said.

He said Alaska State Troopers are investigating, but he hopes that by sharing the story of the break-in publicly he’ll maybe help goose the case along.

“If the story about the church getting burglarized was to irritate somebody, maybe they’d report something they’d seen,” Alexander said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.