TL:DR - Our van was stolen again. She's been found, but we need financial help to get her fixed and home from California. Links to help at the end.
We're sharing this because 2025 is making it clear that we need help.
This last weekend Adrian was in L.A. for Gallifrey One, and on the way to the show Sunday morning he and his helper planned on stopping by our van.
Only, our van, the Iris, wasn't there.
The Iris has been stolen twice before, during the 3 years she was also our home, so Adrian immediately went into a panicked trauma spiral.
His amazing friends at the convention stepped in. His helper and another friend opened the booth while he talked to hotel security confirming the van was removed from the closed lot at about 3am.
They continued to run the booth while he went across town to the closest police station to file a police report (because you can't do it over the phone). Since the van was registered to Mikka he had to video call so the officer could confirm Adrian was allowed to have been driving it and could file the police report. There was also the fun of California not being able to access Oregon's DMV information.
Intermittently during the filing process Adrian was able to secure a rental van so that when the convention ended we had somewhere to put all our stock and displays, and a way to get home. It came out to $1750.
Adrian's friend went to get the rental after he got back from the police station.
Word had gone around the vendors and our booth neighbor took up a collection. We often say Gally is family, and this was absolute proof of that fact. The collection took a chunk out of the rental cost and really made it feel less hopeless.
The Monday plan was to start driving back to Portland, and when they got home then planning could start for how to get our booth to ECCC.
Shortly before Adrian stopped for the night Mikka got the call from the LAPD that the Iris had been recovered, and impounded.
So now while Adrian finishes driving home we are coordinating a mechanic to fix at minimum the door lock and ignition that had both been drilled out, but also possibly other damage that we won't know until the mechanic can get to it.
The mechanic can't get to it till Thursday, which means we have to pay impound fees for 4 days, plus the tow to the impound lot, and the tow to the mechanic. The estimate for that portion is $500-600.
Assuming the Iris isn't horribly damaged the repairs should be done by Monday. We can get Mikka a flight down to LAX for between $50-$250, depending on what's available when we book it (we don't want to book until the mechanic has looked at the Iris and confirmed they can fix everything).
From there Mikka will just need to drive our van home and cover about 3 tanks of gas.
We're looking at anywhere from $850 to $1150 before repair costs (and not including the $1750 rental), which we figure could be $150 or could be $1000 (who even knows with car repairs). And we need to do this all in the next week so that the Iris is home and safe for ECCC the week after.
And it sucks but we need help. We got about $300 from our lovely vendor friends, and that really did help. But were hoping our wider community might be in a position to help as well.
We just don't have the spoons to do a gofundme so if you can help our CashApp is $AdrianElliot, PayPal is [email protected], Venmo is @AdrianElliot13, and you can also buy stuff from the website if you want goods in exchange for coin. And if you're not in a place to help financially, sharing this will help too.
