BOISE COUNTY, Idaho — The caretakers of a Boise County cabin rental resort are hurt, angry and confused, after they say someone broke through a gate on the property and stole their solar power system last week.
Twin Springs Resort installed the system in September. The resort caretakers put it in to upgrade one of their rustic cabins.
“It made us feel really vulnerable, like anyone could come up and take what they want, and we weren't able to stop it,” Panda Sanford, Twin Springs Resort caretaker said.
The system included a 100-pound inverter, four batteries and a Tristar solar controller, which cost the resort $3,200.
“For our small business that's saving for a year or more to get that,” Panda Sanford said. “It's not something that can be replaced the next day, it's going to take years to earn that money again."
The caretakers believe the thief is someone they know.
“It pains me to admit that we definitely at least knew these people,” Skylar Sanford, Twin Springs caretaker said. “We were pretty proud of it and showing it to a bunch of people. They were someone, who at the very least we had met them, or we had shown it to them or they had rented or looked at it themselves at this place.”
The couple is still renting out the Gatehouse Cabin, folks just won't have as many amenities.
“The power was a way for the Gatehouse to have an electric fridge and lights in all of the bedrooms because without power there's just propane light in the kitchen and one in the living room and a propane stove and those still work,” Panda Sanford said.
The incident has now dimmed the light on the Sanford’s sense of security.
“We weren't a lock-your-doors kind of town or resort, you didn't really need to because that was something the city had going on, not here, well now, it is kind of existent,” Skylar Sanford said.
Twin Springs Resort is nestled in Boise County along the Middle Fork of the Boise River.
The resort has since started a GoFundMe page to raise money to purchase another solar power system.