By John Leggett-The Courier-Herald

Whether it was the stage of the moon or just an ill-fated evening on the Plateau, the night of Jan. 22 saw a rash of vandalism the likes of which has rarely reared its ugly head in the Enumclaw/Buckley area.

In Enumclaw several buildings were hit with graffiti and a half-dozen United States flags were incinerated illegally. In Buckley the sandstone welcome sign on the east (cemetery) end of town was spray painted with obscenities and a portable building at Collins High School was gutted by an arsonist's hand.

&#8220It is to premature to assume that these crimes were committed by one person or one group of people. Our detectives have several small leads and have been interviewing people, but we don't know for sure that these crimes are linked,” Buckley Police Chief Jim Arsanto said.

&#8220While it might be a coincidence that all these criminal acts transpired on the same evening, we have to suspect that the spray painting may have been carried out by the same perpetrator,” he added.

Fortunately, the city of Buckley had sealed the signs with graffiti-proof varnish that kept the pigment from the spray-paint from soaking into the sandstone and destroying it. That didn't mean, however, that city workers weren't hard pressed to scrub and pressure wash the sign just to remove the foul language that had been applied to the massive 16,000-pound slab of stone.

&#8220When I first saw the damage to the welcome sign I was furious,” said City Administrator David Schmidt. &#8220This sort of thing isn't cute or some little sophomoric prank that will be swept under the carpet or easily forgotten or forgiven. It's just silly, sick, stupid and in my opinion just plain malicious.

&#8220A lot of people donated their time and financial resources to do something nice to beautify this city. Then to have some lunatic mess it up for everyone - maybe once we put lighting by the signs that should deter the vandals from attempting to mess things up for everyone,” Schmidt said.

Sherrie Munson-Haulet, the owner of Stone Art and Signs, said news of the vandalism was rather disappointing, to say the least.

&#8220Those signs represented a lot of work from a lot of people, including one James Montgomery (city worker), who came through with the majority of the coordination effort toward getting those stones installed. If it weren't for him this thing would have never gotten done.

&#8220As for me, I was commissioned by the city to do the carving of the stones, but I certainly didn't charge them my usual fee and ended up donating the better portion of my work,” Munson-Haulet said. &#8220The work took a long time, too, because it all was done by hand. Even though I was only doing a couple of letters a day, I would wake up in the middle of the night with hand cramps, because it was no laser or sandblaster that did that work. It was all done the old fashioned way, with a hammer and chisel.”

Arsanto maintained that compared to larger communities, Buckley has not had to endure the almost daily occurrences of violence and vandalism. &#8220Until recently, comparatively speaking, this kind of thing has not been an enormous problem for the city of Buckley,” he said, adding, &#8220when these types of things do occur it is very upsetting and the fact that it doesn't happen all that often doesn't decrease the police department's focus level one bit. Buckley citizens may be assured of that.”

One concerned citizen is Buckley City Councilman Ron Weigelt, who has put up a $500 reward, out of his own pocket, for the arrest and conviction of the person or group of people who vandalized the welcome sign.

Fire Chief Alan Predmore said that the portable building at Collins was a total loss.

&#8220We have received several tips and they are currently being investigated,” he said, &#8220but any more tips that people might have, would be useful and greatly appreciated.”

Predmore added that the Buckley Fire Department has submitted the case to the Arson Hotline, which is an Arson Award Fund that has been set up through the Arson Alarm Fund and the Washington Insurance Council, which is offering up to $10,000 for any tip leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for burning down the Collins H.S. portable structure.

The portable building served as an office for the Collins High counselor and registrar.

&#8220The fire displaced a couple of key staff members,” according to White River School District Superintendent Tom Lockyer. &#8220Our system embraces nearly 500 students from the White River, Sumner, Orting and Enumclaw school districts, who are seeking alternative methods to graduate from high school. So, this is one of those situations that creates a hardship for our staff and all our students.

&#8220Fortunately,” Lockyer said, &#8220none of the actual hard copy/paper records that existed and were stored in the file cabinets in the portable, are not lost permanently, because they were all backed up on our computer server.”

John Leggett can be reached at jleggett@courierherald.com.