When Matt Lijewski pulled up to the Central High School Service Station in St. Paul on Sunday morning and saw the garage door was open, it crossed his mind that another staff member could be test driving a car.
Instead, he found the school’s auto repair shop ransacked.
Thieves dumped out trash from the garbage cans and used those cans to carry out hundreds of tools worth about $30,000. They also stole Principal Mary Mackbee’s 1998 Toyota Camry, which was at the shop to be repaired, plus about $2,000 of the shop’s cash from a locked drawer.
“The terrible thing about it is they took the best education tools away from kids,” said Lijewski, the school’s automotive instructor who runs the repair shop. “We do some book learning, but most of the time we’re out in the shop fixing cars, and kids really get a lot out of the hands-on part of my class, which is unfortunate that they took so many of their tools to do that with.”
Police responded Sunday shortly after midnight to an alarm activation at the school’s auto repair shop at Selby Avenue and Dunlap Street. They discovered an open door, but no forced entry, and a police dog found nothing in a search of the building, according to a police spokesman. Officers secured the door and left.
Lijewski arrived about 9:25 a.m. Sunday to get ready for the week, found they’d been burglarized and called police. It seemed the suspects had been back more than once to steal everything, but how they got in the locked building is a mystery because there was no sign of forced entry, Lijewski said.
About $10,000 of the school’s tools were stolen, plus $20,000 of Lijewski’s tools that he bought throughout his 30 years of working in the business. Lijewski was a transmission technician before becoming a teacher, and he was a student of Mackbee’s when she was principal at Harding High School; she has led Central for 24 years.
Classes at the auto-repair shop have continued because not all the tools were stolen.
“We’re still getting by, but it’s just a little rougher because we don’t have all the exact tools for everything,” Lijewski said.
The Central High School Service Station has been around for about 45 years. Students fix the cars of staff, students and community members — customers pay for equipment and a $5 to $10 service fee, rather than the hundreds of dollars they’d pay in labor at regular shops, Lijewski said.
The shop’s phone is always ringing with people looking for appointments, though they can’t get everyone in right away because the shop focuses on a different kind of work each week, depending on the lesson plan. This week is battery starters and alternators.
Mackbee said she always brings her old cars for service at the shop because the price is right, and she knows it’s a good training program for students whose work is monitored by the staff. About 200 students take the auto repair classes annually. Many go on to pursue careers as auto technicians, a well-paying career that’s in demand, Lijewski said.
The school district is working to replace the school’s tools, Lijewski said, but many people have been trying to help in their own way since the burglary.
Mackbee went to Goodwill and bought the shop two screwdrivers, and an educational assistant also spent his own money on an impact gun and sockets. At Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting, a community member handed Mackbee a $50 check for tools, and a customer stopped in the shop Wednesday to give them $100.
A GoFundMe for new tools has been started at gofundme.com/central-service-station-funds. Checks can also be sent to Central High School, 275 N. Lexington Parkway, St. Paul, MN 55104.
Police ask anyone with information about the burglary to call 651-266-5736.
