In the dead of night, someone stole a box truck used for SC special needs athletes

It seems like it wouldn’t be easy to slip away with a 10-foot box trailer wrapped in bright blue vinyl with the Special Olympics logo emblazoned on the side, but someone somehow managed to do just that.

Sometime after midnight Tuesday, someone in a white pickup backed into the Special Olympics South Carolina office parking lot on Oak Park Drive in Irmo, hooked up the trailer and drove off. The theft was reported to Irmo police, according to Special Olympics.

Then they came back and took a similar trailer from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on the same cul-de-sac, said Leigh Lowery, a spokesperson for Special Olympics South Carolina.

The Special Olympics truck is visible on a surveillance camera, but the driver managed to stay in a blind spot and cannot be seen.

“To know these people are out there who would do this is beyond me,” Lowery said.

She said Special Olympics athletes were sidelined during the COVID-19 pandemic and are just now readying for a new season. The pandemic was especially hard on people with disabilities, she said, noting their odds of getting sick were 50% higher than the general population.

Inside the stolen trailer were a sound system, Polar Plunge T-shirts, law enforcement Torch Run hats, beanies, T-shirts, six cases of water, three large coffee urns, a hand truck and banners and sandwich board signs.

All were used for the Polar Plunge events the organization has been staging as fundraisers since Jan. 29. The event is a familiar one — people jump, some walk into freezing lakes and, in Myrtle Beach, the ocean, to raise funds for various Special Olympics sports competitions.

So far, the plunges have raised about $350,000, Lowery said.

But the theft has not foiled the organization. Two previously planned events will go ahead. The Gamecock Polar Plunge is at 5 p.m. Wednesday at Maxcy Gregg Park in Columbia, and the Tiger Paw Polar Plunge at noon Saturday at Lakeside Lodge on Clemson Boulevard in Seneca.

There are 30,707 Special Olympics athletes in South Carolina.

This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 1:24 PM.