LAKEPORT — A garden intended to memorialize former Lakeport resident and civic activist Marla Ruzicka was burglarized Nov. 17 for the second time this year, according to her mother, Nancy Ruzicka.
The thief or thieves stole two transformers and 16 landscape lights that were arranged in pairs around eight olive trees that stand in a circle in the garden, which is located just south of Ruzicka Associates on Parallel Drive in Lakeport. Owner Nancy Ruzicka said she is working to fully develop the garden.
“Every time this happens it sets us back financially,” Ruzicka said.
Ruzicka estimated that the lights and transformers are worth approximately $5,000. One transformer and six of the 16 landscape lights were left behind when the garden was first burglarized in June, she said.
“It would be good to get the lights back, if they would just dump them at the doorstep. It would be so good to get them back in the garden where they belong,” Ruzicka said.
She is also offering a $1,000 reward for their return. An ad asking, “Do your neighbors have new landscape lighting?” appeared in the Wednesday edition of the Record-Bee.
“There is a lot of theft going on, but this is about the lowest,” Ruzicka said.
According to Ruzicka, students at the University of California, Berkeley conceived the idea for the peace garden just before her daughter died April 16, 2005 in Baghdad at the hands of a suicide car bomber. Each of the eight olive trees will eventually bear changeable signs that will offer information about families in war zones around the world.
Currently under way is the installation of a central fountain. Ruzicka said plumbing has already been laid, but replacing the stolen lighting has been a hindrance to getting the fountain designed and put in place. She hopes to have the garden open to the public for meetings and to schoolchildren for field trips by the spring.
“The idea of the peace garden is to teach children how fortunate they are to live in America and to be free, and hopefully to encourage them go out in world and try to make difference as Marla did,” Ruzicka said.
Marla Ruzicka advocated for government assistance for innocent civilians who had been harmed because of military action in Iraq, and formed Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC).
For more information or to help, contact Nancy Ruzicka at 263-6155.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com, or call her directly at 263-5636 ext. 37.
