About a week after her business’s storage cargo trailer was stolen from Toledo, Good Stuff Food Carts & Catering owner Cara Buswell got an unexpected call from a deputy with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.
“This deputy just randomly drove by a few suspicious motorhomes. (The deputy) ran their plates. They came up stolen. Then he saw my trailer,” Buswell recalled in a Facebook post Sunday night.
When he processed the trailer’s plates and saw it had been reported stolen, the deputy called Buswell “immediately,” she said.
The theft occurred at 196 Cowlitz Loop in Toledo between 10:45 p.m. and midnight on March 2, according to Buswell.
The thief, or thieves, cut five locks off of the red 2014 interstate cargo trailer before attaching it to a silver pickup and leaving the scene.
One of Buswell’s friends saw the truck towing the trailer get onto southbound Interstate 5 around midnight on March 2, but didn’t know at the time the trailer had been stolen, Buswell said.
In late February, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office announced it was investigating a suspect who was allegedly stealing utility trailers and selling them on social media in the Portland Metro area and Southwest Washington.
“Initial estimates indicate that he has been actively stealing trailers in our area for over a year and has been selling the stolen trailers,” the Clark County Sheriff’s Office stated in a news release.
The suspect uses the aliases WebbJJ, Joshua James and Joshua J. Webb when selling the trailers online. He has been also known to forge titles and other paperwork, according to the sheriff’s office.
He is reportedly associated with a lifted white 2011 Dodge Ram full-sized pickup truck and a tan full-sized Chevrolet/GMC SUV. He is associated with addresses in Battle Ground and in Gresham, Oregon, according to the sheriff’s office.
“They are coming from three counties away to steal. Imagine how many other things they have stolen and people they have victimized in our county,” Buswell wrote.
The Clark County deputy who located Buswell’s trailer told Buswell the trailer was being towed to a yard in Vancouver, where she would be allowed to pick it up.
She and her sister raced down to Vancouver to pick up the trailer that day, but arrived after the lot closed.
“So, we paid big bucks for them to release it to us today and drove back,” Buswell wrote.
The suspect(s) who stole the trailer had put their own locks on it, cut the vehicle’s headlights and let air out of the tires, according to Buswell.
“Almost $825 later and we are driving down I-5 and screaming that we did it!” Buswell wrote. “We are literally driving home with my trailer as we have the biggest smiles on our faces, muddy clothes, chain-stained hands, adrenaline-dumped headaches, balls of emotion, and gratitude.”
Buswell uses the trailer to store equipment that didn’t fit inside the Good Stuff Food Carts & Catering mobile stand, such as chafing sets, Cambro food storage containers, steam tables, rolling carts and coolers.
The equipment is valued at a total of $4,000, with the trailer itself valued at about $3,500, according to information posted by Buswell’s friends Lucy Page and Gulliver Kimble on a fundraising site.
A fundraiser aimed to help Buswell recover the loss of the trailer and equipment and help her with relocating costs had generated $4,523 of its $20,000 goal as of Monday afternoon.
Buswell plans to clean out the trailer in the coming days, make a detailed list of what equipment inside the trailer was damaged or stolen, and update the fundraising goal.
“I will have a dinner thanking everyone when the dust settles for all who contributed and those who wish to contribute to me relocating further,” Buswell wrote.
For more information or to donate, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/cara-buswell.
