Hi all.....
I've been getting a bit of hate mail about asking for assistance, and believe me it is hard to stick your hand out when you've never had to before. It's very humbling. For the record, I've never represented that insurance was screwing me. Any business owner can decide whether or not to insure their inventory, or contents, depending on whether they feel it is worth the additional operating costs. For me, I generally only ever have used OEM parts on hand and don't stock anything for resale that would be of interest to anyone but someone doing what I do. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that someone would set the place on fire intentionally, nor can I imagine why they would. It's such a personal attack, and after stealing all the tools I need to make my living. This incident came at a time when I was working on a customer's build and had a large amount of goodies waiting to go on his rig, and someone visiting the shop must have passed that info along.
They struck like a viper, and that was it.
Now, I want to take this opportunity to thank SO many people who have stepped forward to help be either coming to the shop from as far away as Toronto and London, even Buffalo! I even had a guy here from Potsdam, Germany on Sunday!
I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of friends and family who are rising to the occasion to generate financial assistance, and it means so much. In the end, I will not let this get the better of me. If I do, my spirit will be broken and I can't allow that to happen. It's bad enough that I have been robbed of the desire to do this work any longer, and since it took me over 15 years to build it to this level, I can't afford another 15 to rebuild it. Someone else will have to carry the torch from here. Perhaps that is what the thieves have planned.
In the next day or so, I will be releasing a list of all the parts and specifics about my stolen equipment so that these cowards can be brought to justice.
Thanks again to all. Life goes on....