TEXAS COMPUTERS STOLEN http://www.themonitor.com/articles/mission-33930-christmas-church.html

Mission church robbed on Christmas Eve

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December 29, 2009 7:10 AM

Nick Pipitone

MISSION — As members of St. Peter and St. Paul Episcopal Church in Mission were leaving Christmas Eve Mass last week, the Rev. Michael Hoffman returned to his office.

Instead of grabbing his things and going home to enjoy the holiday, he made a call to the Mission police.

The church office, at 2310 N. Stewart Road, had been robbed. Only a small amount of cash had been taken from Hoffman’s desk drawer, however.

“We actually thought we were quite lucky,” Hoffman said. “I was annoyed that on Christmas Eve night, a day that we celebrate the birth of Christ, there would be somebody out there breaking into a church.”

But the vandals — in observance of Christmas, perhaps — would wait a day and strike again.

When Hoffman arrived to the church office to prepare for Mass on Sunday morning, he found that two desktop computers and three printers had been stolen, along with some other odds and ends.

Hoffman and Mission Police Department investigators suspect it was the same vandals coming to finish the job mainly because they entered the office the same way, Hoffman said.

The minister would not describe where the office was broken into for fear that it could happen again.

Mission Assistant Police Chief Martin Garza believes the second burglary occurred either late Saturday night or in the early morning hours Sunday.

Garza said investigators have already collected good evidence from the scene, including fingerprint samples from the burglars’ point of entry and the serial numbers of the equipment stolen, which was given to them by church staff.

Hoffman and the church have yet to figure out the monetary damage inflicted from the robbery. But he said the biggest concern for the small church is that the computers stored several important files and documents which they had not backed up.

Services for funerals and weddings, bulletins for church services, membership forms and a host of other documents are now gone, he said.

“For the next several months we’re going to have to recreate all of that information, which is going to take hours and hours of work,” Hoffman said. “That’s more of the frustration for us. Not the cost of replacement.”

The church—which was founded 11 years ago—has never had any issues with burglaries in the three years Hoffman has been there, he said. The congregation moved into its new home just six years ago after meeting at Kreidler Funeral Home in McAllen and then a storefront in Mission for a few years.

Hoffman has worked at other churches before, though, that have been burglarized, he said.

“Churches should be welcoming and open places,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve had to concentrate a lot on security and making sure it is difficult to impossible to get in. We’ve beefed up the security in lots of ways.”

Hoffman said the church has invested in new locks and new keys, among other things.

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Nick Pipitone covers McAllen, PSJA, the Mid-Valley and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4446.