STERLING, Ill. — A bronze statue nicknamed "Goose Boy" overlooked Oak Knoll Memorial Park Cemetery's pond for 70 years.
"A lot of people over the years drive down here. They always say 'this is so nice that you guys have ducks down here, we brought our kids down to feed the ducks, you know, we bring bread down to them," said Arlyn Hinrichs, a long-time employee. "The little boy was always there to, you know, that was just part of it."
Arlyn and his brother, Scott Hinrichs have worked at Oak Knoll Memorial Park for over 30 years.
One winter morning, the two discovered the statue had been ripped from its bolted base. The thief used the pond's frozen water to reach it.
The statue had been stolen for its bronze material.
"You would have thought that they would have took it maybe out into Iowa or somewhere or Chicago, where we would have not been able to find it," Scott said.
Just a few miles down the road from the cemetery is Sterling's scrap yard.
"Then one day, I was just kind of sitting around, I was at home and I was working in my garage and something triggered me to say 'I'm gonna call Cimco,' the scrap yard in Sterling here just for the heck of it," Scott said.
The scrap yard employee informed them that he had set aside a suspicious item and asked the employees to send a photo of the statue.
"They sent the boy back to what he looked like, and he knew it was our boy," Arlyn said.
But, the cemetery staple arrived in a different condition.
Goose Boy had been hacked, sawed and cut into pieces in attempt to sell for scrap. The man who tried to sell the statue said it belonged to his grandmother.
"(The employee) thought that there was a little more to it, than the fellow that brought it in saying it was his grandmother's. He thought there was a whole lot more to it. So he did keep it back," said Scott.
According to Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker, illegal scrapping is a common problem.
"We haven't really seen a huge increase. It has been a constant because, you know, scrapping and why they're doing it is to support their habit for drugs. In our area we have such a terrible meth problem. They're constantly scrapping copper. This is just another incident," Booker said.
The cemetery employees plan on sending the statue for repairs. As of Wednesday, it's unknown if it can be restored from the damage.
