A Rocky Mountain House scuba diving instructor’s customized camper school bus was stolen Tuesday.
Denise Boniface, 58, said the bus, which has an $8,000 scuba air compressor inside, was taken out of a back alley near Lochearn Elementary School.
“I went to get some things out of the bus and it was gone,” she said. “As soon as I saw it was gone I ran up and down the street to ask my neighbours if they saw anything.”
Boniface said someone attempted to steal the bus a couple weeks ago while she and her husband were in Ontario for their daughter’s wedding.
“Whoever drove it didn’t know how to drive a school bus and they left it,” she said. “They broke all the locks around the bus and spent quite a bit of time with it. We just kind of laughed at how stupid thieves can be.”
Boniface said she called a locksmith to re-lock bus and was planning on moving it to friend’s acreage. But it was successfully stolen before she could move it.
“We feel kind of sick that we didn’t do more to protect the bus … and I guess we didn’t take it seriously enough. I thought they were foiled once so they wouldn’t come back.
“They tried to take it at night the first time, but this time they tried to take it in the middle of the day,” she said. “They knew what they were doing this time, so I don’t know if it was the same people or not.”
This isn’t the first time vehicles have been targeted in her neighbourhood, she added.
“We’ve had lots of car break-ins around here, but nobody has had their vehicle stolen,” she said. “We have a lot of concern over the break-ins.”
The bus was used for Boniface’s business, Aqua-Nuts Diving, when she would bring scuba divers to places without any dive shops or a compressor to get air.
“Financially we probably spent $10,000, but considering how much time we put into it, it’s got to be worth $20,000 or $30,000,” she said, adding there are personal items in the bus, such as gifts from her grandchildren.
A post about the missing bus have more than 1,000 shares on Facebook.
“I was hoping, but didn’t expect it to get quite so much attention,” she said.
Boniface said anyone with information should contact Rocky Mountain House RCMP at 403-845-2881.
sean.mcintosh@reddeeradvocate.com
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