Portage Inlet Girl Guides invite the public to do some drive-by cookie shopping Saturday to help replace camping equipment stolen from a leader’s vehicle.
About $2,000 worth of tents and stoves — items needed for an international camp-out come July — were taken overnight Monday from a car.
While some guides are going door to door, parents are marshalling hundreds of boxes of cookies for sale opposite Marigold Elementary at 3730 Grange Rd., off Burnside Road West in Saanich, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. — or until they’re sold out, said mom Stacey Rumsby.
“That would be an amazing outcome,” she said.
The guides also welcome metal for recycling, another tactic they are taking to raise funds to attend the Spirit of Adventure Rendezvous, a weeklong provincial “back to basics” outdoor camp in Smithers July 22-29.
The stolen equipment is sized to fit the event’s 25-foot-by-25-foot campsites.
“We have been spreading the word, asking for everyone to be on the lookout for two Big Agnes tents for sale, two blue camp stoves and two Coleman camp stoves that say Portage Inlet on them,” Rumsby said.
About 2,500 Guides, Rangers and Pathfinders from Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere are expected to attend the camp, known as SOAR.
“The girls who are going to SOAR have been fundraising $1,000 each to be able to go to this camp and this gear is needed to go to camp,” Rumsby said.
If the equipment doesn’t show up, the Guides will have to sell another 1,800 boxes of Girl Guide cookies — and fast — to replace it.
A pre-SOAR camp-out, meant to let the girls practise setting up the campsite, was also scheduled.
West Shore RCMP have been contacted about the theft, Rumsby said.
