Dragon Boat BC office robbed days before Lunar New Year

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The Lunar New Year is starting on a sour note for organizers of the Dragon Boat Festival in Vancouver.

After breaking into the Creekside Community Centre Sunday night, thieves made off with computers, ceremonial drums, and paddles, as well as an office safe, and thousands of lucky red envelopes stuffed with prizes destined for community events this weekend.

Dominc Lai is with Dragon Boat BC, he says the group was shocked to realize their valuable equipment had been stolen by thieves.

“ur staff arrived on Monday morning after the weekend and discovered that we had a break-in on Sunday night,” he says. “What happened was that we had a group of people or an individual break into our office and they stole a couple of computers, our office safe a couple of other valuables, but also some of the materials we had prepared for the Lunar New Year celebrations this weekend in Chinatown.”

He says it was a tough blow to deal with, adding volunteers are now trying to replace all the envelopes to ensure Year of the Rat celebrations are not ruined.

“There was a lot of disappointment. We understand things happen from time to time. But it’s just disappointing because of valuables that can’t be replaced. The items that we had prepared for Chinese New Year, as well as some of the more sentimental items, for example, thank you plaques that we’ve received over the years and some of the drumsticks that we’d received as gifts or drums,” he says. “Those were stolen as well. And those don’t have any value outside of our office.”

He says it’s a big loss for the tight-knit community.

“It is fairly significant for our To lose our computers and safe. Obviously, as a nonprofit organization, we do operate with very limited budgets. And also the safe was taken after the weekend, which meant that some of the payments that we had received over the weekend were gone,” Lai says. “So, we are obviously disappointed. There is some coverage that will get, but it’s just something that we have to take on the chin and move on with.”

Lai says despite some of the financial worry, there’s been an outpour of support from volunteers and members of the community.

“At the end of the day, the dragon boat community, the paddling community is a tight-knit one. We’ve notified people that this happened and there’s been a lot of expressions of support from paddlers so we’re really lucky to be able to rely on our paddlers to help get us through this,” he says. ” And we know that after all of this happens, will somehow make it through and we’ll keep on doing what we do.”