North Vancouver’s premier LEGO artist is picking up the pieces.
Paul Hetherington and his partner Melissa Rekve were left devastated last month when the vehicle Hetherington was driving home from Brickworld Chicago LEGO convention was stolen, along with a dozen of their unique LEGO creations that had been shown around North America.
They reported the theft to police in Spokane, Wash. where the vehicle was stolen but were told not to get their hopes up about ever seeing the car or its contents again. A week later, the vehicle turned up but it had been ripped apart and left full of garbage and drug paraphernalia.
“But none of our stuff.”
By then, word about the theft of the models had spread far and wide through B.C. and Washington State news outlets, and even farther in the LEGO community.
Two weeks later, Hetherington and Rekve were contacted by two strangers on Facebook who claimed to have two of the LEGO models. They were willing to give them back and did not ask for any reward. Rekve arranged for Spokane police to go pick up the boxes. Inside were Hetherington’s LEGO Moulin Rouge and less than half of his Buck Rogers-inspired Dragon Base.
The ordeal has left Hetherington with understandably mixed emotions.
“It was maybe 10ish per cent of the LEGO that was stolen, so it wasn’t the full recovery but we’ll take what we can get,” he said. “It was a relief and slightly frustrating just because you know there’s more. It was unexpected, so it was pretty good feeling.”
Hetherington said he still holds out hope some of the others may be found intact.
“These models are all kind of like my little babies right? I’m connected to them,” he said.
Most recently, Hetherington has had public showings of his scale models of famous West Coast Modern homes via the West Vancouver Memorial Library and the Harmony Arts Festival. With those shows now wrapped, Hetherington has been selling LEGO replicas of famous West Van buildings designed by the likes of Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick and Geoffrey Massey. While he’s been giving the current owners of those buildings first right of refusal for the LEGO replicas, there are still some that haven’t been spoken for.
He’s also working on a scale model of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World ride, which he will be debuting at Seatte’s BrickCon in September.
“That song get’s stuck in your head, definitely,” he said.
