Who Needs Squeegee Men? The Outer Boroughs Are Still Gritty!

Those pining for the bad old days should take comfort knowing that the bad old days are alive and well and they’ve returned to the Bronx to revisit an old friend:

In the age-old contest for most despicable vandal, stealing from a preschool that serves autistic and other special-needs children is bound to earn you a spot on the list. But when the object you steal is part of a memorial to the school’s longstanding and recently deceased principal? Automatic top 10.

So congratulations to the mystery thieves who on the night of Thursday, June 7, visited 2778 Bruckner Boulevard — the home of These Our Treasures, Inc., also known as TOTS — and walked away with a Japanese cutleaf maple tree — a tribute to beloved educator Nan Sforza, who succumbed to cancer three years ago.

The small tree — carefully raised in a pot in the school’s front lobby for the past two years — was planted hardly a month ago, in an emotional ceremony that dedicated the entire garden on TOTS’ Brinsmade Avenue side to Sforza. The school’s staff was planning to attach a memorial plaque within a few weeks.

Imagine their surprise, then, when they arrived at work on Friday morning to find an empty hole where the tree had been. Since, the staff has filled the hole with a white-and-red sign reading “Shame on You,” alerting neighbors to the purpose of tree.

. . .

[In a statement to the Bronx Times Reporter, TOTS officials reasoned] that since the exotic maple was carefully uprooted, rather than ripped up or toppled over, the average local hooligan is probably not to blame. “It appeared less like a random act of vandalism,” the staff wrote, “and more like the effort of some misguided gardener to get a lovely little tree at no cost.”

So far, police have been unable to track down the vandal, and no eyewitnesses have come forward. But TOTS is offering a truce to whatever brand of crook lifted its loving tribute: If the maple magically reappears at the school building in the near future — as neatly as it was removed last Thursday — the staff won’t ask any questions.