Sentimental Santa home
Robbers return decoration after keeping it for a year
By BOB BLAKE
SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP — For five years, the animated, black Santa stood in the front yard of Diana Carter’s home in Shawnee Township. As the light of passing cars hit the figure, Santa sang, danced and turned his head.
Santa’s presence became something of a neighborhood attraction through the Christmas season, Carter said.
“The neighbors loved him,” Carter said. “I live on the curve, and when they came around the curve they knew to hit their lights for their kids, and the Santa was going to take off.”
This year’s holiday season wasn’t nearly as jolly for Carter or those driving the curve from Pecan Avenue onto Yellowood Street. Bandits swiped Santa from Carter’s yard last year on Christmas Day. Adding insult to injury, the Santa had been a gift from her late husband, Jerry, who died in 2009.
“That had been the only thing I had been putting out,” Carter said. “I just didn’t feel like putting anything else out. He was enough by himself, and then he was gone.”
Fast forward a year to last Saturday night, Christmas Eve. Carter went to bed late but was awakened sometime early Christmas morning by a noise outside her home. When she got up and looked outside, she could see a silhouetted figure lying in her yard.
“I was like, ‘Well, what is that? Is that the Santa from last year, or is that a person who fell?’” Carter said. “So I called the police, and it was that Santa Claus, and he was back. I was too scared to turn on any porch lights, to do anything because I wasn’t sure. So, I called the police.”
Santa didn’t come home empty-handed, either. He came bearing a Christmas card.
“The envelope said, “From the robbers to the victim,’” Carter said. “And then the little Christmas card on the inside they wrote, ‘Keep Santa safe. We tried. It’s a miracle he’s back.’”
Carter said the police officers helped her put Santa in her garage, where he’s still standing.
“I am so happy to have him back, though,” she said. “It just meant a lot. I couldn’t find another one like him.
“I have worried everyone at work for a whole year. I know at least 11 of us have looked online from last year to this year. I have looked in Texas when I was down there. My girlfriends have looked in Indianapolis. My one girlfriend has looked in Berea, trying to find me a Santa because I was devastated.”
Eventually, someone found one in an online auction, but with a price tag exceeding $200, it was more than Carter was willing to pay, she said. Then, the original reappeared.
“I’m not even mad at the people who took him,” she said. “Whoever they are, I forgive them.”
With the sentimental Santa safe at home, will he be back at his usual post next year?
“Oh my God, yes he is,” Carter said. “He is definitely going back out.”
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