OLDS — After the cube van belonging to the Sim’s Furniture store in Olds was stolen on Dec. 21, Lyle Blatz, who co-owns the store along with John Potiuk, received an interesting phone call.
“A guy said he knew where my van was and he would like to be compensated for it.
So I asked him what he wanted and he said, ‘well, how about you get me a couple of $50 gift cards at Tim Hortons? You get me one and I’ll tell you where the van is and then you give me the other one,’” Blatz said.
“Anyway, the guy would not meet me because I said no. I said, ‘you tell me where the truck is. I’ll drive right now and I’ll give you $100 cash' and he wouldn’t do it.”
The company reported the theft to Olds RCMP and on social media. Later that day they were told it was in Calgary, a fact confirmed by Calgary police.
It’s now in a police impound lot in Calgary and Blatz is working with an insurance company to determine the amount of damage done. So far, he’s been told that the driver’s side door has been damaged and the ignition system was “punched out.”
That van is the only cube van the company owns (they sold their other one in the summer).
Blatz said luckily they were all caught up with deliveries when the theft occurred. They did borrow a friend’s truck to move various items to and from their warehouse, located across the railroad tracks.
“I was more upset with the inconvenience of the whole thing, right? Of course, there’s never a good time for something like that to happen, right? You’ve always got plans of doing stuff,” Blatz said.
“And again, I was extremely lucky that our deliveries were right caught up. We had some pickups which was OK.
“I still might have to make a trip to Calgary though, because it’s got all of our supplies in that truck, like blankets and carts and tools and stuff that we need on a daily basis.”
He added that fortunately, they did not have to lay off their van driver as a result of the theft.
Blatz was asked if the company has any plans to theft-proof the van once they get it back.
He said they’ll likely move some stuff around in the warehouse so they can store the van in there when it’s not being used.
Blatz is not sure why thieves decided to steal the cube van as opposed to some other kind of vehicle, although he has a possible theory.
“(Police) said there’s some remnants in the back of the truck that tell them that it was used to haul something, but we don’t know what. Hopefully it wasn’t two pallets of fentanyl or something,” he said with a laugh.
Olds RCMP acting Cpl. Kurtis Milbrandt confirmed the theft of the van saying the file on it is pretty much concluded, now that the vehicle has been located.
