WEEHAWKEN AND BEYOND — Deborah Steiner Gagnon and her husband Chris are known in their Weehawken neighborhood for the holiday decorations they’ve put up for the past seven years at their residence on Blvd. East, a snaking waterfront road.
A week ago, they took advantage of the good weather and put up Christmas decorations, which included two heavy, 6-foot wooden nutcracker-like soldiers. “Think Radio City Christmas Hall,” Gagnon said. It took she and her husband several hours to wrestle the large soldiers up from the basement and into their positions alongside the columns that support her front porch. They even tied them up with wire to secure them.
When she returned home on Thursday evening, they were gone.
“It feels personal,” Gagnon said. “This isn’t something you take purely for its value, like an iPhone or a purse. It’s a part of your home.” She mentioned that while the commercial-grade soldiers were not cheap, the family’s loss was sentimental rather than financial.
“We enjoy making Weehawken festive for the kids and the community,” Gagnon said. “My son even cried.”
Neighbors are fond of the family’s decorating efforts – many have asked to take photos of themselves with the items they put out, and Gagnon finds it hard to believe that someone could have managed to take such large items on such a prominent street completely unnoticed.
“Perhaps they made off with them under cover of the rain,” she said. “We don’t even feel like we have the energy to decorate our home anymore after this.”
Gagnon filed a police report on Thursday as soon as she discovered the soldiers were missing.
Weehawken Police Chief Jeff Welz told the Reporter on Friday, “Unfortunately, during this season, people become the Grinch and pick up other people’s decorations.” He confirmed that whoever took the soldiers had to cut through wire to get them down.
“It’s a shame,” Welz said. “Weehawken has some great decorated houses and unfortunately people take advantage of this. It happens in seconds and is almost impossible to prevent, even if you chain them down.”
He advised that if residents see anyone fooling around with decorations, especially if it’s late at night, not to assume it’s the homeowner doing so and call the police. “If you see something, say something. We will be there in minutes.”
Gagnon believes they were stolen some time between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, and hopes that anyone in the neighborhood who may have seen any suspicious activity that could lead to the return of the soldiers or to the identification of whoever took them will call the Weehawken police at (201) 295-5000. —Gennarose Pope