The theft of their beloved Minion has left some Conestogo kids pretty upset.
Three tires painted and stacked together to look like the popular Minion character from the Despicable Me and Minions movies vanished from outside a Northfield Drive home last Thursday.
“My daughter would say goodbye to it every morning,” David Hofbauer said. “She’d wave at it and she called it my Mini. So that day was pretty bad. She cried herself to sleep. And it happened again a couple days ago, she started freaking about ‘where’s my Mini, where’s my Mini,’ as we were driving out one day.”
They received the Minion from a friend through a free recycling type program. The friend originally got them from someone in St. Jacobs. They planned to throw them out, but gave them to the Hofbauers instead. They planned to use the Minion as part of a beanbag toss for his son’s birthday party that weekend.
It only lasted a week before it was stolen.
“I was pretty surprised because they were by the house. It’s not like they were out by the curb where they could be mistaken for garbage,” Hofbauer said. “They were 30 to 40 feet back at the back of our driveway, sitting right beside our deck. Daytime was kind of weird too, but I guess it’s safer in the daytime if there’s no one around.”
![Josephine Hofbauer is pictured with her beloved Minion, which was stolen from her family’s Conestogo home last week.[Submitted]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/post_news_tires.jpg)
The tires were old, so he doesn’t think the thief was after them for their value. He reported it to the police, but because the Minion isn’t very big he knows it will be hard to find. Also, since it was stolen on a day that the St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market was open, it could be long gone from this area if it was taken by someone passing through.
“They were interested in pictures to see three tires painted as a Minion, I think is what the dispatcher asked me,” Hofbauer said, in reference to filing a police report.
A friend of his who’s also a police officer suggested they reach out to the community to see if there were any leads because he remembered when a child’s wagon was stolen, it was soon returned once more people were aware.
He says they probably won’t bother getting another one. They’ve actually removed some stuff from their front yard because of the theft.
Hofbauer hopes getting the word out will see the Minion returned.
“Hopefully somewhere there’s some husband who told his wife he bought this and she’ll read the paper and she’ll ask him again where he got it,” Hofbauer said.
