All that's left of Gwen Nicholson's front-yard lighted Christmas display is the heavy-duty extension cord that was attached to her house just past Paw Paw Cove. In addition to large lighted reindeer and a life-size sleigh, thieves stole several strands of white lights and nine extension cords.Herald photo by Rose Hooper |
A grinch stole Gwen Nicholson's Christmas. And she thinks he had some helpers.
"One of my reindeer was 6-foot, life-size with over 300 lights - it would take at least two people to steal it," said a tearful Nicholson when she discovered all her Christmas decorations were taken from her front yard near Cowan Valley. Nicholson thinks it happened around 2:30 a.m. Friday, Dec. 8. "I awoke with a start, from a dead sleep at that time," she said. "I heard something, something out of the ordinary, but I didn't go outside to check my decorations." When she headed out to work Friday morning before 7 a.m. it was still dark and she was still a little sleepy. A heavy mist from the Tuckaseigee River blanketed her driveway and Old Settlement Road. Later in the day her neighbor called her at work to tell her that her front yard was bare all her Christmas decorations were gone. "My heart skipped a beat. 'Oh, Carol, please don't kid me,'" Nicholson told her neighbor. But Nicholson left her job at the Smoky Mountain Center and rushed home to discover, sure enough, her yard, just past the Paw Paw Cove sign, was bare. "They stole everything - my two big reindeer and my two baby reindeer - one was grazing - and even my big life-size sleigh. They even stole my nine extension cords and ripped the lights off the bottom of my gazebo," said Nicholson, who spent more than 80 hours assembling the lighted displays and decorating her yard and gazebo. |