STEUBEN, Maine — After having $8,000 to $10,000 worth of tools stolen, Sam and Monique Farmer wondered if they had made the wrong decision in moving to Maine.
The couple and their 2-year-old son, Shaemus, moved here from Florida shortly before Christmas and have been living in a condo in Winter Harbor while working on a fixer-upper house they bought in Steuben, where they plan to settle.
Sam, 29, remembers working at the home until dark on Sunday, Jan. 10. He returned to the site the next morning and found someone had broken into the trailer in which he stored all his tools. Most of them were gone.
“I looked to the right and there was everything they didn’t want, discarded in a pile,” Sam said.
He said the thieves took mostly corded tools of all kinds, from saws to drills and routers. The only items they didn’t take were ones that were not easily moved or those tools for which they apparently didn’t know the value, he said.
The Farmers were devastated. The tools, some of which Sam had since he was 14, were not only necessary to fix up the house, but also were connected to Sam’s livelihood as a carpenter.
The couple began to think they ought to fix up their house in Steuben and just sell it so they could move elsewhere, they said.
“We felt pretty alone,” said Sam.
Maine State Police Trooper Staci Carpenter was the first person to help them rebuild their faith in the community as she investigated the theft, they said.
“She drove around from house to house with Sam for, like, two hours” talking to neighbors about what they might have seen or heard in the area on Jan. 10 and 11, said Monique, 25.
So far, however, there have been no arrests.
An article in the Ellsworth American weekly newspaper and posts on Facebook quickly spread the news about the couple’s predicament, the Farmers said.
“We just started getting a flood of calls,” Sam said, describing callers as “generous” people “volunteering their old tools for us to have.”
Someone at Home Depot in Ellsworth called and told Sam to come to the customer service desk, he said.
He did, and was given $750 of free tools including a Ridgid mitre saw,
Husky rolling tote, Ridgid skill saw and drill and an impact hammer and drill.
Home Depot Manager Joshua Kelsey said Thursday he tried to pick out the tools that are the most expensive to buy.
“We looked at what we have and what contractors need,” he said.
Other companies also made donations. For example, Sam said he received $50 gift cards from Ellsworth Building Supply in Ellsworth and Kennedy Marine in Steuben.
“We just wanted to do something nice just to prove there’s nice people in the area,” Angela Kennedy said Thursday. “They seem like really nice people.”
Thanks to the donations, Sam said he has been able to replace a quarter to a third of the tools he lost. However, he still does not have enough tools to do full-time carpentry work for hire. He said he will start by accepting small jobs for which he does have the right tools.
Meanwhile, Sam continues working on the roof of his house — his roofing tools and supplies were not stolen because they were inside the house, he said.
“I have to get the roof done,” he said. “There’s a good many places leaking.”
It’s a slow process working by himself, he said. Some members of the community have volunteered manpower, but so far he has declined.
“It’s the wrong time of year to roof and I shouldn’t subject anybody else to it,” he quipped.
Sam said he and Monique plan to move in during the next month, even if the major repairs aren’t yet done, because they believe this will help prevent future thefts.
“We’re going to move in as quickly as we possibly can,” Sam said.
Both Sam and Monique said they were grateful to a “long list of really cool people” for all the donations and support that helped reaffirm their decision to move to Steuben.
“I think it’s amazing that we can be smiling … only a week later. That’s the power of community,” Monique said.
Sam, who originally grew up in Harpswell, had moved to Florida because many of his relatives were there.
“But it just wasn’t home,” he said, adding he and Monique, who is originally from New Hampshire, specifically sought to move to the coast of Maine at a location between Ellsworth and Harrington before settling on Steuben.
Now that they have their faith in the community back, they hope for only one more thing — for the person responsible for stealing the tools to be caught.
Carpenter, the state trooper, said Friday she couldn’t discuss the ongoing investigation, but added that “all agencies in the area are working together.”
The Farmers, meanwhile, have installed a security camera system at the house and are offering a $500 reward for information leading to the recovery of the tools or an arrest of those responsible for the theft.
“We do want to see whoever it is not do it to anyone else. And if we can get our tools back, all the better,” Monique said.
Anyone interested in contacting the Farmers for carpentry work or tool donations may call Sam at 941-421-8060 or Monique at 248-7056 or email SamCanConstruction@gmail.com.