Vandalism shuts down Helping Hands temporarily

Police are investigating after volunteers at Sault Ste. Marie Helping Hands discovered rampant vandalism inside the headquarters of the not-for-profit charity Thursday morning. 

President and chairperson Robert Peace says Helping Hands will be closed until the new year as volunteers work towards cleaning up the mess left behind at the Wellington St. W. building.        

“The first indication was just some stuff upstairs tipped over and all over the place, and then as they slowly went through the facility, I kept getting more and more texts,” Peace told SooToday during an interview Friday. 

The only thing that appeared to be missing was approximately $50 in petty cash. 

“We slowly started to realize that nothing had really been stolen, but a lot of strange things had happened,” Peace said.  

He's not wrong, either: there were no obvious signs of forced entry, and both the circuit breakers and furnace were turned off. The security cameras were intentionally turned around. A number of “rather unfortunate effigies” were also placed around the interior of the building, but Peace declined to elaborate further due to the ongoing police investigation. 

“There’s more to the story, for sure,” he said. 

Despite the popular opinions being spewed on social media about the incident, the Helping Hands president firmly believes the vandalism wasn’t the work of marginalized people in the community.  

“What we’ve come to realize is that it’s not some street person who’s broken in and tried to steal stuff,” Peace said.  

Some volunteers believe the vandalism was a deliberate attack on the charitable organization, Peace added.   

“If this is an intimidation thing to try and disrupt us, or to try and scare volunteers away, that’s not going to work because we have an amazing group of people,” he said. “But I do have to reassure them, and these kinds of things don’t help.”

Sault Ste. Marie Helping Hands is scheduled to open its doors again Jan. 3.