GRANDVIEW, Mo. — Last weekend, volunteers at the nonprofit Flourish: A Furniture Bank were caught off guard when they discovered one of their trucks was out of commission because of a hole in the gas tank.
They suspect someone drilled the hole in an attempt to steal gas.
“Panic was the first response,” said Elinore Noyes, who works for the organization. “It was very, very upsetting and a huge block to what we're trying to do here.”
According to her, the truck is the most important piece of operations. The organization provides furniture for families dealing with housing insecurity.
That means without the truck, the nonprofit's numbers go down. Twenty pickups were canceled this past week, and the organization expects to help 30 fewer families this month.
“The fact is that it happened, and it created a difficult circumstance for us. But we're not going to change that,” said Amy Cox, Flourish: A Furniture Bank’s executive director.
Instead, the furniture bank chose to move forward, shelving the decision to reach out to police.
“We know that vandalism, in general, is a fairly common occurrence and that it's unlikely to be prosecuted,” Cox said.
Instead, she said Flourish took a different route — empathy.
“Giving the benefit of the doubt, we should assume that somebody was in a really hard place and this was what they saw as their best option,” Noyes said.
The challenge is fueling them. With community support, the furniture bank raised almost all the money needed to cover the costs of fixing the truck, which is more than $4,000.
“To see people from all across our community — volunteers, donors and families that have received services — jumping in to support us and ensure these trucks get repaired and back on the road has been extremely heartwarming and reassuring,” Noyes said.
It's a feeling Noyes and Cox don't take for granted.
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