LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Months after it was stolen and stripped, the Faith Lutheran High School marching band finally has a brand-new trailer for the upcoming school year.
Surveillance video from May shows a hooded figure stealing the trailer from the school’s parking lot around 4 a.m. The trailer would later be found underneath a Boulder Highway, completely stripped of its custom trimmings.
“We eat meals in this trailer, we celebrate wins in this trailer,” Band Director Dan Zeigner told FOX5.
A spokesperson said the trailer itself was worth $20,000, while the content inside was worth up to $25,000. Instruments, cables, and other materials were inside the trailer, all custom-made for the band.
“Students are feeling anywhere from heartbroken to angry about this. They all feel violated,” the spokesperson added.
On Wednesday, FOX5 visited a local auto body shop that donated their time, talent, and tools to fix the trailer for free. Ozzie Arias, the Regional Manager at BRC Coach and Transit, first heard about the story back in May.
“I thought to myself this is a Christian school. I wanted to just help the community, and it was an opportunity for us to step in, because we’re blessed enough to have this business,” he shared.
Arias says it took him and his team more than 200 hours of work over the past few months to completely remodel the truck.
“We stripped it down and completely re-did it,” he said. “We painted it for them, re-decaled it… There’s nothing that wasn’t touched.”
Arias and his team presented the newly repaired truck to Faith Lutheran leadership Wednesday morning.
“I saw the picture of it, but to now see it live… Oh my goodness,” said Faith Lutheran CEO Dr. Steve Buuck.
Zeigner added, “Coming from the pictures that we saw — of the side panels being damaged, the wrap being torn off, no tires, no wheels — to this beautiful trailer… This is above and beyond anything that we could have imagined coming back to us.”
The school is thankful to the BRC and the other community members who helped fix up the trailer. The school says they plan to find extra ways to secure it, including adding Apple AirTags to it.
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