When Vandana Kumar’s family visits her in Los Angeles, they always stop by a bronze plaque embedded in a Woodland Hills sidewalk commemorating her time at Canoga Park High School. Canoga Park High School) as a science teacher for 25 years.
Her family posed for photos with the plaque, which was installed in 2018, as if it were part of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Then, over the past few weeks, it was torn off — likely by someone trying to sell it for scrap metal, officials said.
“It bothers me — I’m not going to lie,” Kumar, 60, said of the theft.
She was one of 11 teachers whose honorary plaques were torn from the sidewalk of Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills last month. Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield this week announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the theft.
“This has nothing to do with my plaque,” Kumar said. “This is about someone having the audacity” to steal something built in memory of a teacher, she said.
In 2018, Kumar attended a ceremony to honor her with a plaque.
(Nuppur Kumar)
Blumenfield’s office said in a statement Thursday that the theft “caused significant damage to the sidewalk and resulted in the loss of these landmarks that have economic value and meaning to the surrounding communities.”
Several plaques are installed each year by the Heart Walk Foundation, a nonprofit organization that honors outstanding teachers in the Valley.
Los Angeles Police Chief Rodolfo Lopez said each plaque is worth about $4,000 and weighs about 40 pounds.
Video captured someone stealing four plaques at night, but the video was too blurry for facial recognition technology to identify them, Lopez said. Over the next few weeks, seven more plaques disappeared, and Lopez said the department believes the thefts are connected.
Lopez said local scrap metal vendors had been alerted about the theft and told to contact police if anyone came in to sell the plaques.
The Los Angeles area has recently seen an increase in thefts of metal items, including items made of copper and bronze that can be sold as scrap.
The famous lights of the Sixth Street Viaduct were dimmed recently after thieves stole the bridge’s copper wiring. More than 100 plaque thefts were reported from two cemeteries in Carson and Compton, and a bronze statue of a newsboy was stolen from MacArthur Park.
Joseph Andrews, founder of the Heart Walk Foundation, said in an email that the burglaries in Woodland Hills “violate the community in many ways.” He said the perpetrators “stole not just a bronze medal” but “a teacher’s legacy”.
The stolen plaques were worth a total of about $44,000, not including the cost of sidewalk repairs.
Kumar retired from Canoga Park High School last year and said the plaque is part of her legacy. As a Hindu, she said, she would be cremated when she died, so the plaque was a virtual reminder of who she was—so much so that she often joked with the principal, “When you see the flowers on my plaque, you That’s when I knew I was gone.” ”
