A little house Santa Claus uses to meet and greet kids after a Woodland Park Christmas parade was taken, but when the perpetrator learned what he had, he came forward to return it.
The dis-assembled house was swiped overnight from a receptacle behind a Woodland Park non-proft, Charitable Treasures, 107 W. Henrietta Ave., said Tracie Bennitt.
“It’s just totally annoying,” said Bennitt, chairwoman of the annual Lighter Side of Christmas parade and festivities. “It’s Santa’s house!”
Charitable Treasures works with developmentally disabled children, and the kids were planning to decorate the house on Friday, Bennitt said, after it was assembled today. But when the parade committee met this morning, members were surprised, and hurt, to find it missing.
“Everybody was just looking at each other like: ‘Huh, did anybody do something with the Santa House?’ It was gone, just gone,” Bennitt said.
After initial publicity about the missing house, “a guy walked in the door” of Charitable Treasuers, Bennitt related. He ” ‘fessed up that he took it, thinking it was scrap wood.”
The children are planning to put fresh paint on the house this year, including painting windows and flowers boxes on the plywood and timber structure.
“They’ve all been excited about the project,” Bennitt said.
The house, which is about 16-feet by 10-feet with a peaked roof, was used for the first time last year.
A local company, Smith Woodland Construction, donated the materials, worth about $1,000, and designed the shelter to be assembled and dis-assembled for storage.
It had been stored on a local ranch until recently when it was brought into town in anticipation of the season. This year’s parade is Dec. 5.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
