LIVONIA, Mich. – A young Livonia couple who put in the work to grow their small business lost $20,000 worth of landscaping equipment to thieves, bringing their business to a halt.
Thieves hooked up to their trailer and drove it away.
Kirstyn Smar and Chris Atkins are the co-owners of All American Maintenance. They arrived at work Monday morning and didn't see their trailer parked in its usual spot.
"I called the landlord, he said he didn't move it," Smar said. "We asked all of our neighbors around. They had come in multiple times during the day and said they never saw anything."
It soon became clear that Sunday night into Monday morning, someone had stolen the trailer, with $20,000 worth of equipment inside.
"We got an opportunity to start our own business, and they took it, and now somebody took our business," Atkins said.
"(We have) 160 accounts that we can't service right now because we don't have any of our stuff," Smar said.
Surveillance video shows the bold thieves stealing the car trailer from the same parking area around the building.
"I had it chained to the fence," Mike Stone said. "Multiple locks. It was hidden in the corner. I wouldn't have thought it was a target."
The thieves took the trailer somewhere, dropped it off and returned 30 minutes later to steal the landscaping trailer.
Surveillance video doesn't show the license plate, but Smar and Atkins hope somebody will recognize the vehicle.
"We just hope, and keep putting it out there, someone will come up," Smar said. "We'll do anything for it. We just want our equipment back. It's everything we have."
Some of their equipment was locked up in the garage, but the problem is some of the smaller mowers, which are expensive, are needed to get into the smaller yards. They hope someone who knows something about the crime will speak up.
There's a camera right over their garage, but the landlord said it doesn't work. Atkins bought his own camera to put in the corner of the garage.