WASHOUGAL — The president of the Camas-Washougal Pickleball Club is calling for increased security measures at Wolfe Courts after a storage box containing a defibrillator and a variety of equipment was stolen in late October.
One of the club’s two metal boxes was taken from the courts at Hathaway Park in Washougal, according to the Washougal Police Department. The box contained an automated defibrillator, towels, batteries, lost-and-found items, water bottles, and pickleball balls and paddles, among other items, Camas-Washougal Pickleball Club President Lynda Boesel said.
“It had anything that we needed,” Boesel said. “I’m not going to put those rigid boxes back out in the open because, in my opinion, we’re just a target, so we have to find a better security system.”
Boesel said she discovered the 6-foot box was missing when she went to the courts on the morning of Oct. 25.
“It was my birthday, the weather was great, and I had planned on playing. I walk onto the courts, and somebody says, ‘What happened to the box?’” she said. “I had to walk out to the parking lot because I was so upset.”
The locked box was attached to a chain-link fence on the west side of the courts, Boesel said. The club had a coded lock-box on the side of the storage container that held the key.
“It was very well secured. Somebody had to have somehow gotten to the inside of the box because it was bolted from the inside in three places to a two-by-four that was chained and bolted to another two-by-four outside of the fence.”
Boesel filed a police report but admitted that “there’s not really much they can do.”
“Based on the size and weight of the box, I would assume a vehicle had driven up the paved path from the upper Hathaway Park parking lot when the theft occurred,” Washougal police officer Kyle Kinnan said in a report. “There is poor lighting in this area and no cameras. I discussed with Lynda about seeing if they could install motion lights.”
The courts have had other issues in the past, Boesel said.
“We did have an incident last year when two leaf blowers were taken, but that was a case of negligence on somebody’s part of not locking the box. We have had signs removed. The porta potties were tipped over. We have had your typical vandalism stuff, more annoying than anything.”
Boesel reached out to Washougal Mayor David Stuebe to request that the pickleball club — a chapter of Vancouver-based Columbia River Pickleball Club — be allowed to use a city-owned storage building next to the courts.
“I have suggested partitioning a small space that we could use in there,” she said. “We have decided that we could partition it off so that we don’t get into their things, and they don’t have to worry about our things.”
Stuebe seemed in favor of the plan when he spoke about the theft at the Oct. 28 Washougal City Council meeting.
“This really saddens me. I don’t like hearing this stuff,” he said. “We’d like to see if maybe we can let them use that brick building to lock their stuff in, and I’m going to be talking to her again about some other options. But according to the police report, whoever stole that thing, it wasn’t kids.”
Boesel said she is going to start limiting the number of people who receive the code to the key box.
“Our club is just getting so large that we have to limit the amount of people that have access to the codes,” she said. “We have gained a little over 100 members since January.”
Boesel has launched a GoFundMe to help pay for replacement items but doesn’t expect to have them in place until March.
In the meantime, Boesel is asking club members to bring their own equipment and supplies.
“Members are stepping up to the plate,” she said. “I’ve told everybody, ‘My apologies, but you’re going to have to bring your own balls. If you have leaf blowers, please bring them. If you have any squeegees or any kind of cleaning items, please bring them,’ because we have nothing.”
Boesel said that the pickleball club generates revenue for Camas and Washougal via tourism. And the group donated two-thirds of the money it raised at its annual fundraiser earlier this year to Washougal police and the Camas-Washougal Fire Department.
“We are a big part of this community here in Washougal. We want to maintain our reputation because of the support that we get,” Boesel said.
The GoFundMe has raised more than $4,000 at clbn.us/pickleballcourts.
“We have 300 members, and part of the membership (fees) that we get goes toward buying and supplying all the items needed to play at Hathaway Park,” Boesel said. “Our club just cannot afford to replace these items. That’s why I’m asking for a GoFundMe, because I don’t want to deplete the current funding for our chapter.”
