OREGON COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM TUALATIN RESOURCE CENTER http://www.oregonlive.com/metrosouthwest/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/metro_southwest_news/116139573575200.xml&coll=7

The Tualatin Resource Center will move from the old Tualatin Elementary School to the Tigard High School campus, after an early October break-in left the center's two employees feeling unsafe.

The group, which offers counseling, job skills and referrals to low-income residents, could be joined by the Caring Community Closet early next year. Like the resource center, the closet is a Tigard-Tualatin School District program that operates out of the old elementary school.

The nonprofit Tualatin School House Food Pantry, an independent group, also is housed in the former school.

"We're going to move it (the resource center) to a portable at Tigard High," said Susan Stark Haydon, a district spokeswoman. Because the closet, the resource center and the food pantry have different hours, she said, the two resource center employees were sometimes in the building alone. If one of them left, the other would be alone in the building.

Over the weekend of Sept. 29 to Oct. 1, vandals broke into the building, stole computers and threw eggs. Three weeks before, graffiti had been left on the former school.

"They don't feel safe at all there," Stark Haydon said. "After the break-in, they never did set their office up (again)."

The center's move will be a loss for Tualatin, Mayor Lou Ogden said. "That is the central resource (for social services), and it's huge for that to be gone."

Ogden said he hopes the center can return to the city soon, perhaps at the new Tualatin Elementary School.

The school district is preparing to sell the old 12.75-acre site. The district vacated the school more than a year ago, after building a new school nearby.

Because the food pantry probably will need to move after the school site changes hands, the city is helping the group look for a new home, said Debra Senger, a program coordinator with Tualatin.

The city has several options: placing a portable on land next to the police office; a small city-owned house near the senior center; or the Van Raden Center, which previously housed YMCA recreation programs .

Senger noted that each property has potential drawbacks, such as the emergency traffic at the police station, the small size of the city-owned house and deed restrictions on the Van Raden Center. "We're working very diligently trying to find them some place."

Luciana Lopez: 503-294-5976; lucianalopez@news.oregonian.com