Headline Surfer photos / At left are snapshots of the box that contained a silver-colored Sony Handycam DCR-SX85 video camera owned by Headline Surfer. The camera and a tripod attached with it were stolen shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday night outside the Thomas C. Kelly Administration Building in DeLand. The camera's serial number is 12621286.
DELAND -- Sometimes bad things happen to good people. After all, they say nice nice guys finish last. With that said, somebody walked off with our video camera and tripod Thursday night outside the Thomas C. Kelly Administration Center.
It was just after 9 p.m., following a 12-hour day on a whole host of County Council topics, and with it raining heavily, I took off my suit jacket to put over it, while leaving the building with County Chair Jason Davis.
We were under the overhang near the ATM machine and a bench to go over some last-minute questions I had when he made a dash for his car and I took a call on my cell phone. That's when things got hazy.
I honestly don't remember if I left the tripod with camera attached to it right there or if I carried it again under my jacket and then left it by the side of the car when I placed a small blue bag with my notes and still camera inside the vehicle first.
You might understand that being human, I make mistakes -- sometimes stupid, but nonetheless, honest mistakes. We all do. In this case, though, I have some unusual circumstances. With little sleep over the previous couple of days, while dealing with a family death and other pressing issues related to our business operations -- mainly trying to generate more advertising revenue, things like this can happen. But then again, my loss is the person's gain who took the equipment, or is it? More on that later.
When I got home to New Smyrna Beach, I realized there was nothing under my jacket and without even leaving the car, immediately called the Volusia County Sheriff's dispatch to report the camera and tripod missing.
I then turned right around and drove back the same 25 miles (a total of 75 miles in one day with 12 hours of government in between) and was met by two DeLand PD cops who said the inside of the building was searched as was the outside and the parking lot across the street where I had parked.
A security person at the county building took me around to where I had been with the camera just to be sure and we came up empty. A gentleman from the Sheriff's records office told us he saw me talking on my phone with my jacket draped over the bench and my tripod standing on the ground in the folded position with the camera attached to it.
I received a follow-up call the following Friday morning from the head of security at the county office building. She let me know she reviewed video surveillance inside that showed me walking out of the building with County Chair Jason Davis with me holding the the camera and tripod in one arm with with my jacket covering part of it and my blue bag in the other. It's a cloth bag with handles on it labeled "Halifax Health," that I received at the annual Daytona Beach Regional Chamber of Commerce annual dinner earlier this year as Headline Surfer is a member of the Daytona chamber.
I called County Chair Davis earlier on this Sunday morning on other matters when he again expressed how bad he felt about the situation at hand and informed me that he went back Friday to the security office and reviewed a surveillance video of us walking out the door with me holding the tripod with the camera attached. When I initially called him Thursday night after calling VCSO dispatch, he said he would follow up and he certainly did.
That camera and tripod have captured many big stories as part of our coverage -- since we bought it Feb. 28, 2012, for $285.42. We had purchased the tripod a year earlier for $50.
That video camera, a Sony Handycam DCR-SX85 -- was a major upgrade for us from two earlier cameras that didn't quite have the zoom and storage capability as well as pixel quality.
Certainly it's nothing to write home about compared to the cameras that the Orlando stations like WFTV or WESH use, but it was great for our purposes: New Smyrna Beach football home games with the halftime band shows, the New Smyrna Beach High School graduation, the Daytona 500, Coke Zero 400, hundreds of community and countless breaking news events.
And Thursday's 12-hour County Council marathon was typical of the extent of video coverage we had packed on that trusted camera. On it was the state of the county address by Chairman Davis, his first, who shared the spotlight with Council members Joyce Cusack, the at-large member from DeLand, Pat Northey from Deltona and Joshua Wagner from Daytona.
There was an update on beach patrol services and discussion about the sharing of gas tax revenues with the cities and county.
There was also an emotional four-hour hearing on whether the county should support an aerospace program south of Oak Hill in protected habitat. Dozens of people on both sides of the issue -- those favoring it because of the jobs it would bring and those opposed because of concerns for the environment.
Among the speakers we captured on video in that camera was a 5-year-old boy from New Smyrna Beach, who had actually spoken with astronauts on board the International Space Station from the Burns Sci-Tech Charter School in Oak Hill.
I hope the person or persons who walked off with our camera and tripod will find good use for it, but more than likely they will pawn it for drugs, if they haven't done so already.
The camera and tripod served us well -- from interviewing Trayvon Martin's grieving parents in Miami just a few short weeks after he was killed, to all kinds of breaking news throughout Volusia County, Orlando, Tallahassee and everywhere in between -- from the Daytona 500 to the New Smyrna Beach home football games and countless other happenings.
It's one thing to pick up a $20 bill from the sidewalk and put it in your pocket, but something tangible like this is altogether different. If I were the one coming across this tripod and camera, I would have left a note at the scene saying that I had brought it to the police for safe keeping or better yet, I might have just called the cops and waited for them to arrive so nobody else would take it.
But then again, that's me. Not everyone is the same. A lot of good was done with the use of the camera and tripod. So whoever decided to take it for themselves, I feel sorry for you that you would resort to taking something that you know rightfully belongs to someone else.
I certainly have beaten myself up enough inside for leaving it behind in the first place.
It's not the end of the world. Today, I replaced it both the camera and the tripod for just under $200, from what little I have to begin with since the revenue I make from this internet newspaper is how I provide for my family.
We had no insurance for loss or theft (only for damage), but these tools are essential to our multi-media ability to bring you the sights and sounds with our news coverage. We had to take the money from our food and gasoline savings to replace the camera and tripod.
No matter how destitute, no matter how troubled my life could be, I could not in good conscience steal or take something I know rightfully belongs to somebody else.
They say nice guys finish last, but the important thing is they finish. I'd like to think I'm one of those nice guys. Most people are. Whoever stole our video camera and tripod is not nice, however, and because of that they don't finish, period -- not in the long run.
They say nice guys finish last, but the important thing is they finish. I'd like to think I'm one of those nice guys. Most people are. Whoever stole our video camera and tripod is not nice, however, and because of that they don't finish, period -- not in the long run.
There is nothing else I can say except I feel bad for those who were counting on us delivering the news, especially that little boy astronaut.
I am far from a perfect Christian, but I do know right from wrong. I am reminded of a passage, I think most appropriate for the person or persons who walked off with our video camera and tripod, and learn perhaps the hard way that such a theft won't provide them comfort or profit. It comes from Ephesians 4:28: Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with [his] hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
And this pssage is even more pronounced, from Proverbs 10:2: Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.
If you stole this video camera and tripod because you had to feed your family, I certainly would have shared what I had with you. If you did this for drugs, I might have offered to help you get counseling had our paths crossed and I saw you with my property.
I have little hope, if any, realistically, that you, who took our video camera and tripod, might even read what I have written here. But perhaps it will serve as a reminder to others to search within and show mercy and respect for others when coming across something that you know doesn't belong to you, but rather to someone else who might have been as honestly careless as I was and hurting as a result.
Never forget that two wrongs don't make a right. Just because someone foolish enough to forget doesn't give you the right to take what's not yours. Enough said.