FARGO — It has become a spring tradition for a Fargo couple to retrieve their camper from the lakes area. So recently, Rick Archer and Sandy Bishop went to a Park Rapids area storage facility to do just that.
"Springtime, around this time, me and my fiancee Sandy get excited to go camping," Archer said. "We turn the corner, and we pull into the lot, and the camper is gone."
The roughly $20,000 camper, nearly paid off, along with about $7,000 worth of gear inside, was gone. They called the Hubbard County Sheriff's Office right away, who confirmed there is an active theft investigation.
The storage facility has no surveillance cameras, but it has a keypad for getting vehicles inside, meaning whoever took it out had to know or guess the code. Archer dropped the camper off in October, so the theft could have happened at any point during the winter.
WDAY News called the storage facility and confirmed with them that the trailer was not towed away for snow removal.
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"I had three weekends already booked in May all ready to go, and now our camping season is gone. It's taken away from us," Archer said.
The couple took to Facebook, hearing stories from others about their campers being stolen in similar ways over the past few years. Archer wants to let other camper owners know that, despite their size, they can be stolen.
The camper is insured, but the stuff inside has to go through homeowners insurance, Archer said. He is already out thousands after the deductible. His advice to others is to lock up the trailer tongue, lock wheel wells and put some kind of GPS tracker inside the trailer.
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