The green patina gave the bronze statue of a gold miner a sense of antiquity, speaking to its 80 years of service in a small park in Mid-City Los Angeles.
And then last week, a 22-month-old boy on his way home from day care noticed something awry in his daily routine. "No, no, no," he said from the back seat. His mother, Clara Magyar, turned to look.
The 7-foot miner was gone.
When neighbors in the Carthay Circle community heard the news, they feared it had been stolen for scrap, like so much copper wire and plumbing around the region, as prices for metal have soared.
"I think someone stole him to have him melted down," said Judy Moore, president of the Carthay Circle Neighborhood Assn. "I don't want to see him as rain gutters. It just breaks my heart. He was part of neighborhood history."
Los Angeles police are investigating the theft and others, and they suspect the miner was indeed taken for scrap. Nationwide, bronze, brass and copper artworks are vanishing into scrap yards, destined for the foundry furnace.
The theft of public art -- as well as the stripping of homes and streetlights of copper wire and plumbing -- can be bold. Late last month in Brea, thieves used a cutting torch to remove a 6-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide bronze sculpture from its concrete stand in front of a business. The work, "Faceless Crowd," had been featured on a tour of the city's public art. It was the third theft of a statue in Brea in nine months, where fire hydrants, commercial plumbing fittings and trucks' catalytic converters have also gone missing.
"This has been going on for as long as metal existed," said Brea police Lt. Jack Conklin. "But only recently has the price of metal gone through the roof."
So far, Brea police have been unable to track down the missing statues. Detectives say the thieves typically cut up the artworks and take different bits to different scrap yards to avoid suspicion.
Los Angeles police detectives say they won't comment on their investigations.
Many thieves in Los Angeles are targeting the wiring used for street lighting. In December, police announced that 370,000 feet of copper wire had been stolen in four months, disabling 700 street lights. The thieves open boxes at the bases of adjacent poles, snip the wire that runs between them and pull it out one end. Police say they often they work in industrial areas at night.
The theft of the gold miner statue required more audacity.
