Commission puzzled by stolen service vans

Thursday, May 9, 1996

Lax security measures cited for three occurrencesBy Marie
Blanchard

Daily Bruin Contributor

Two weeks ago, Jennifer Algarin, director of a community service
tutoring program, went to pick up one of the seven community vans
to drive volunteers to central Los Angeles.

Once at the university parking lot where the vans are kept,
Algarin realized that the van she regularly uses was gone.

"We had the keys, but no van," Algarin said.

This case is not an isolated incident. Within the last five
months, three vans have been stolen from the undergraduate student
government’s community service commission.

Two of the vans have already been recovered. The first, which
was taken in January, was retrieved a few weeks later when Cathy
Silverio, the director of the community service commission, and a
friend spotted the seven-passenger Dodge Caravan in a Landfair
Avenue parking lot.

They contacted the university police department, and the van was
towed back to the university parking lot.

Two weeks ago, two more vans were stolen within the same week.
Last Tuesday, one of the missing vans was returned to its original
parking space after Silverio found it and immediately notified
police.

Though commission officials said they do not have an official
suspect, the organization may have an idea of possible suspects,
according to commission employees.

Volunteers could be making copies of the keys, then using the
new copies to steal the vans later, Silverio said.

Twenty-four different projects currently use vans to drive
volunteers to community service sites. The commission’s projects
range from tutoring children to delivering food to senior
citizens.

The vans are used six days a week, and all seven are vital to
keeping the projects going, Silverio said.

Although these cases are the first time the commission has ever
had any van thefts in its 35 years of existence, these incidents of
reappearing and disappearing vans have raised concerns about the
security of the commission’s vans.

With between 2,000 to 3,000 students who volunteer at the
commission, many volunteers have access to the vans, according to
Charlie Cheu, a first-year biochemistry student and an intern at
the commission.

In the past, the keys were all kept in a locked drawer in the
commissions main office, Cheu said. Officially, only a few people
had access to the combination and they would have the key given to
them when they signed up to take a van.

However, Cheu indicated that unauthorized volunteers knew the
combination and could access the keys.

Others who work at the commission confirmed that the security of
vans has previously been lax.

"In the past people have used the vans for pleasure without
checking them out and then returned them, but we had never had one
stolen," said Rose Ancheta, next year’s community service
commissioner.

University police officers said they were critical of the
security measures, and that the vans seem to be the only university
vehicles that have a high theft rate on campus.

"Only those (community service commission) vans seem to get
stolen," said Det. Mark Littlestone. "They can’t seem to keep track
of them."

It makes it difficult for investigators to locate the vans when
the commission does not keep track of who took the van keys,
Littlestone added.

But he also noted that unless the vans have been repainted,
chances of eventually finding them are high.

Commission officials have looked into different ways to prevent
the future theft of vehicles. Two weeks before the thefts, the van
keys were moved to the students accounting offices in Kerckhoff
Hall as a result of the first winter quarter thefts, Cheu said.

Now, in order to acquire a van key, a student has to be on a
pre-approved list of possible drivers. The driver also has to show
identification and leave his driver’s license number when he is
given the key.

Yet despite these precautions, the thefts have continued. Cheu
mentions that one of the van keys disappeared about a month ago and
then was returned in the mail slot. Then a few weeks later that
particular van was stolen.

"In the past, sometimes people didn’t bother to sign out the
keys and they just took them," Cheu said. "But this is the first
time vans have been stolen."

Until all the vans are recovered, the commission rents out extra
vehicles for about $36 a day.

"It really sucks that these vans are missing," Ancheta said. "We
use them to provide community services. Without them we can’t get
to where we need to go."