CALIFORNIA COMPUTERS STOLEN Glendale News Press > Publicsafety:

Duo face charges in school thefts

Police caught man and woman after they allegedly posted a pitching machine on EBay.
By Veronica Rocha
Published: Last Updated Thursday, April 2, 2009 10:10 PM PDT

LA CRESCENTA — A La Cañada Flintridge man and woman are due in Pasadena Superior Court today to face theft charges for stealing about $100,000 worth in computers, sports equipment, video surveillance and teaching tools from local schools, including Glendale and Crescenta Valley high schools.

Prosecutors charged Martha McRae, 44, and Mark Wallace, 40, on Wednesday with 10 counts of receiving stolen property and two counts of possession of a controlled substance, said Sandi Gibbons, a Los Angeles County district attorney’s office spokeswoman.

Wallace pleaded not guilty and is expected to have a preliminary hearing today, Gibbons said. McRae will be arraigned today on the charges, Gibbons said.

Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station detectives began investigating the school burglaries in February when the thefts started, Sgt. Ray Harley said. Burglars broke into the schools overnight to steal the items, he said.

“The most important thing for us was giving the stuff back fast to the kids,” he said.

Detectives got their break in the case when the pair posted an advertisement to sell a baseball pitching machine on the Internet auction site EBay, Harley said. The machine matched the description of a machine stolen from one of the schools, he said.

The advertisement led them to a La Cañada Flintridge home where McRae and Wallace lived, he said. Detectives found stolen equipment and methamphetamine inside the home, Harley said.

The pair allegedly stored more stolen equipment at a storage unit in Montrose, he said.

Detectives didn’t realize how far-reaching the burglaries were until they recovered video surveillance equipment, computers and a radio information system stolen from Glendale High School, he said. The high school is outside of their coverage area.

Glendale High Principal Deb Rinder could not be reached for comment.

Stolen athletic equipment from La Cañada and St. Francis high schools had been purchased by the schools and students, who needed the items, such as baseball gloves, cleats and bats, to play games, Harley said. The items were worth $40,000, he said.

A 500-pound ceramics-making machine was stolen from Arcadia High School and band instruments were burglarized from Rio Hondo Preparatory School, Harley said.

Old computers that were meant for recycling were stolen from Crescenta Valley High School, said Win Saw, the school’s technical coordinator and math teacher.

The computers, which were more than 5 years old, were going to be recycled, and the school would have likely received $50 to $100 for the items from a recycling yard, he said.

“The dollar amount was very low,” Saw said.

But he remembered a man approached him several weeks ago at the school and asked him questions about the computers, which he said was unusual.

Saw got a call this week from detectives, asking him to pick up the computers, which he didn’t know were stolen, he said.

“The idea is that it was stolen from our property without our full knowledge of it,” Saw said.

Most of the stolen equipment has been recovered and returned to the schools, Harley said.

“Fortunately, for the schools and students, they got their stuff back,” he said.