AFTER ATTACK BY COPPER THIEVES, CALLS FOR MORE COPS IN BROAD CHANNEL
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| Sophia Vailakis-DeVirgilio and Mike McLoughlin
stand in the spot where McLoughlin was attacked by two men stealing copper
pipes from Vailakis-DeVirgilio’s Broad Channel home earlier this month. Anna Gustafson/The Forum Newsgroup
When
Mike McLoughlin walked up to his friends’ house on West 12th Road in Broad
Channel on June 6, he was doing what he had done every day after Hurricane
Sandy – collect the mail for a family that hasn’t yet been able to return to
their home because of the costs of renovating the structure devastated in the
storm.
But on that Thursday
morning, McLoughlin heard something he never had before – a noise coming from
the house that Sophia Vailakis-DeVirgilio, her husband and 10-year-old daughter
had once called home before the hurricane forced them to seek refuge at a
second home in Brooklyn.
As McLoughlin walked
towards the noise coming from the back of the house, he found himself face to
face with a man exiting the back door with copper pipes that the individual had
just swiped.
“He started hitting
me, and I got him in a headlock,” said McLoughlin, a building engineer who has
been unemployed since
The two men, who
McLoughlin said were also trying to steal a barrel full of wires from the
backyard shed, soon took off, but not before they attacked McLoughlin so
viciously that his right eye was swollen shut.
“Mike didn’t even
think twice before protecting our house,” said Vailakis-DeVirgilio, a computer
help-desk analyst at a law firm. “They could have killed him with those copper
pipes.
“I’m forever
indebted to him,” she continued. “Mike is the kind of people you find out here
– people who give you the shirts off their backs.”
Both McLaughlin and
Vailakis-DeVirgilio emphasized this instance is no single occurrence – thieves
are constantly hitting Broad Channel for copper pipes because so many residents
have yet to return to homes they cannot afford to fix.
About half of the
houses along
“It’s a very big
issue because everybody’s pipes are exposed,” he said. “We need somebody, a
police presence, coming down the block so somebody knows if they’re coming out
of a house with pipes, there could be a cop there.”
Vailakis-DeVirgilio
also suggested that police or elected officials look into “some strategically
placed cameras” that could help to deter the crimes.
Additionally, in
response to concerns raised during the attack against McLoughlin, 100th Police
Precinct Community Council President Danny Ruscillo, Jr. invited Broad Channel
residents to the group’s next meeting on Wednesday, June 26 at the Knights of
Columbus on Beach
While the NYPD could
not provide numbers specifically for incidents involving copper pipe theft,
burglaries have risen dramatically in the 100th Precinct, according to city
statistics. There have been 73 burglaries reported in the precinct, which also
covers Rockaway, which is a nearly 70 percent spike over the 43 incidents
reported at the same time last year.
Copper thieves have
long plagued Hurricane Sandy victims, with constant reports of such incidents
coming from places like
And this is more
than just people wanting to make a few bucks off the houses of hurricane
victims, Vailakis-DeVirgilio said – such crimes are the result of a confluence
of things outside many residents’ control: the hurricane, the limited funds
received from FEMA, and the burdensome costs of rebuilding – to name a few.
And while their
house is nowhere near ready for the entire family to move back,
Vailakis-DeVirgilio said her husband is going to have to soon move back into
the top floor of the house, “because we can’t afford to not live here anymore.”
“We’re paying for a
second home and storage and doing our clothes at a laundromat,” she said. “And
we’re still paying the mortgage on this place. We’re probably paying an extra
$1,700 a month because of all of this – $1,800 if you count laundry.”
She and her daughter
are likely going to move into a friend’s house down the street from her own
home when her husband returns.
Despite all the bad
– and there is plenty of it – Broad Channel residents say they have long
learned to take care of one another when other organizations fail them – and
they said they will continue to do that in the face of what seems like a
never-ending barrage of Sandy-related trials.
“The people around
here are the salt of the earth,” Vailakis-DeVirgilio said. “Most people believe
government and police won’t be of any help, so we reach out to one another.”
By Anna Gustafson
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JUNE 10, 2013...http://w12thrd.blogspot.com/2013/06/an-everyday-hero.html
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