A blanket stuck out from a gap in the door. Nevaeh Esteves-Parker ’28 moved back to campus from Los Angeles on August 15 for RA training. When she and her mother went to retrieve her belongings from Hillside Storage, they discovered that the unit lock was stuck and it had been totally raided.
The remaining boxes and broken items were mixed together and strewn everywhere. Pictures were torn out of their frames and left on the ground.
Esteves-Parker and the eight other members of the class of 2028 LA Posse 20 cohort chose to store their belongings in Carlisle for the summer rather than pay the hefty cost to ship items back and forth from California.
Instead of beginning the year smoothly, the members of the cohort are recuperating from the loss of more than $20,000 worth of belongings.
The members who had not moved in yet found out virtually.
“We lost everything in the blink of an eye,” said Giovanny Barrera ’28. “We wouldn’t think that would happen here in Carlisle…We were in shock.”
Missing or destroyed items included fridges, microwaves, fans, bedding, towels, clothes, school supplies, electronics, sentimental items, photos and family heirlooms.
Esteves-Parker filed a police report the same day.
The students stored many family heirlooms and sentimental items.
Barrera said, “One thing that just triggered me that we lost was a sweater that my dad gave me from when he was a kid and I would wear it all the time when I missed my family…Something that definitely also triggered me was seeing a picture of me and my mom on the floor, knowing that I framed that one and it was in a nice frame…I took some of my stuff back but being in there just gave me such a big anxiety attack.”
Hillside Storage is a facility at 22 Cranes Gap Rd., ten minutes north of Dickinson. It does not have cameras or a security system aside from a fence around the property, and could not provide a “clear explanation of how this could have happened,” according to the students’ GoFundMe page. Hillside Storage only paid the cohort back $3,000. They expressed gratitude for the compensation, but it was insufficient to cover the needs and losses of all nine students.
The police have no leads as to the perpetrator. Kevin Casillas ’28 said, “We were all confused and surprised when the policemen had told us that was the first time they’ve gotten a complaint about that specific storage company.” Members of the cohort searched their items up on resale sites like Facebook Marketplace and Depop, but did not find anything.
On August 17, Barrera organized a GoFundMe page to help the cohort recuperate. He said they were hesitant to do so “because we weren’t sure how it would be received, especially within a PWI. There was a lot of uncertainty about the kind of support or reactions we might get, especially with such a high goal.”
The GoFundMe reached $3,000 in donations in the first day, and over $14,000 as of September 15. Family, friends and professors all reached out to support the group.
Recent Dickinson graduates living in Carlisle passed down their dorm items. Friends of the cohort, such as the Dickinson Infernos, donated fridges and microwaves. Barrera described the outpouring of support as “wholesome” and that slowly “Dickinson began to feel like home again.”
After learning of the situation, the College “jumped on it right away,” according to President John E. Jones, who described the theft as “a really lamentable situation.” The College helped the students file an insurance claim and initiated emergency school processes, according to Provost Renée Cramer. When the students arrived in Carlisle, DPS took them to the storage unit. Their Posse mentor, Melissa Sturm-Smith, and professors Sarah Niebler and Jennifer Blyth helped them clear it out. helped them clear it out.
The students received donations and emotional support from the Posse Foundation itself. The Posse Foundation provides scholarships and long-term college support for low-income students who show leadership in high school: all nine members of the cohort spent their spring semester of senior year doing pre-college training.
“The Posse community is bigger than just the nine of us,” said Eliana Soto ’28 “There are Posses in every grade, even a new incoming one called Posse Chicago 1. They’re spread across the country at different schools too, and we were lucky to receive support from so many of them. It was amazing to see how many people shared our story on Instagram, even the Dickinson Latinx Alumni Association.”
However, members of the cohort have found it difficult to emotionally recover. They felt broken down, deeply hurt and saddened by the theft They have lifted each other up and beome closer.
The students have prioritized re-purchasing daily essentials and school supplies necessary for the school year. Immediately after they began recieveng donations, the members split the money equally and ordered life essentials on Amazon Prime. DPS, friends and fellow students offered them rides to T.J. Maxx and Walmart.
Barrera conveyed the group’s frustration tat having to re-purchase items that are now more expensive. have gone up in price because of inflation. They still need to replace the winter clothes that they lost, and hope to at some point replace their gaming consoles.
Posse spent four days loadingtheir items into the unit, and it would have taken a long time for thieves to move the heavy boxes and refrigerators back out. Barrera believes that it “seems unlikely that no one was seen,” and that the “items would have taken effort to steal.”
“We had our theories, but of course we can’t say anything for sure, there’s no footage or solid evidence,” said Soto. “But since it took us a few trips to load everything, and it’s an open outdoor unit, it’s possible someone saw us going back and forth in Melissa’s car. Maybe they noticed how many boxes, fridges, and other items we were moving in and saw it as an opportunity.”
The thieves only took one shoe from each pair, and left behind Dickinson-branded items such as sweatshirts. The members of Posse didn’t expect such a thing to happen to them. The lack of clarity about what happened has put the group at unease. They have no sense of whether it was targeted, or who might have known that it was their storage unit specifically, which was the only one broken into in such a way.
CBS reached out to the group via GoFundMe to cover the fundraiser. “We were very scared of what the outcome could be. We just thought that it’d be better for us to just sit it out and see how things go on their own before we make broadcast news,” said Barrera. The group wants to make sure other students who store their belongings in Carlisle over the summer can avoid a similar situation. Next summer, the group will still have to store their belongings in a storage unit, but plans to divide into smaller groups.
If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser, you can visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-posse-college-students-rebuild-after-theft.
