BRITISH COLUMBIA COMPUTER HARD DRIVE STOLEN http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=b3934c28-f3d3-4375-9d47-6cd922b2d302

Hard drive stolen in Nanaimo holds images of young boy who died

Andy Ivens, The Province

Published: Sunday, November 14, 2010

Jen and Ben Veenhof had their hearts shattered when their two-year-old son, Mason, died in a tragic accident two years ago.

Now their grief has been compounded by heartless thieves who on Saturday, Nov. 6, stole the only remaining video images they had taken of Mason, who suffocated after becoming trapped between his bed and a wall in their Powell River home in October 2008.

The Veenhofs had the irreplaceable video file stored on an old computer hard drive that Jen's father had volunteered to rehabilitate.

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Jen and Ben Veenhof and their son Mason Veenhof in a family photograph taken before his death in October 2008 at the age of two and a half.

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"When you plug it in, it doesn't turn on," Jen told The Province on Saturday.

"We were taking it to my dad, who runs a software business in Parksville. He was going to fix it.

"He was going to back [the files] up off of it, because we hadn't done that yet," she said.

Ben actually saw the thieves, two men in their early 20s, rummaging through the trunk of the car they were using for the weekend at around 10 p.m., but he wasn't alarmed, thinking it was someone they knew.

"We thought it was my younger brother and a couple of his friends" who had just left the house on McGirr Road in Nanaimo, where the family was staying with Jen's mom en route home from Victoria.

"We didn't realize right away that the computer had been stolen," she said. She and Ben each thought the other had removed the hard drive from the trunk for safekeeping.

Jen hopes the thieves, who drove off in a grey 1980s F-150 pickup truck, realize the hard drive is worthless junk to them and find it in their hearts to return it, no questions asked.

The four-year-old Dell E-360 desktop model should be easy to spot because it has purple crayon markings on the black faceplate, the handiwork of a budding artist in the family.

While friends and family have other video files and pictures of Mason, nothing can replace the homemade video the Veenhofs took of their little angel while he was alive.

"Mason was a super happy little guy, always smiling, very social," recalled Jen.

"Now we don't have any of the videos of him. Watching the videos was like watching him again."

She is grateful that her friends and family have offered their images of Mason.

"But those aren't images that we remember," she said.

"Now those moments are gone, because nobody else had those pictures."

The thieves -- or anyone else who comes across the abandoned hard drive -- are urged to drop it off at the Neighbourhood Church on Rutherford Road in Nanaimo or contact Nanaimo RCMP.