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LEOMINSTER — Brenda O’Neill was crushed when she went out to walk her dog one morning not too long ago and realized the mini fridge serving as a community pantry alongside her Little Free Library had gone missing from her front yard.
“While the point of having a pantry is to share with the community… I’m confused as to why someone would take the housing for the pantry itself except out of malice. (And I’m honestly a little worried about them coming back and creating chaos with my Little Free Library),” she posted in the Leominsterites Unite Facebook page on Aug. 7. “I think I’ll wait a bit before I put another pantry out…but if anyone out there has a small wine refrigerator that I could use a replacement, (does not have to functional) I would gladly take it off their hands.”
The post garnered close to 300 reactions and over 100 comments, with many people expressing shock over the alleged theft stating, “that’s just horrible!” and “this saddens me.”
“That is terrible!” one person expressed. “I drive by your pantry all the time and I am always so impressed with your kindness and thoughtfulness for the passerbys who can stop to get a drink or a snack. I hope you know that your kind gesture has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. Your actions are exactly what this world needs right now.”
Someone asked if there was a camera in the area that might have caught the perpetrator on video, to which O’Neill replied, “my neighbor has one but I’m not sure that this area of yard would be seen on their camera.” A day later she posted a still from a video from her neighbor’s security camera of two people loading the fridge into the trunk of car in broad daylight.
One person commented in the thread that maybe the person who took it needed a fridge, but O’Neill pointed out that it “was not functional.”
“It was just used as a housing for the nonperishable pantry items and personal care products,” she said. “But maybe they thought it was a working fridge? Either way, I’m not giving up. I’ll just try to secure my next pantry a little better to try and avoid this happening again.”
Some offered to help O’Neill replace the fridge and within hours she updated the post — “I’m picking up a donated mini fridge to replace the stole one. Love wins!” She noted that two people had offered replacement fridges, which are ideal because “they keep the pantry items dry and safe during crazy New England weather.”
On Aug. 11 she posted “we are back in business” and gave a “ginormous thanks” to a woman who donated a wine fridge and props to her husband “for using one of his vacation days to raise up my library to accommodate the new, more secure pantry set-up. Thanks to you all for reaching out with support and kindness and offers to help!”
O’Neill wrote that she restocked the pantry with non-perishable food and had put together some toiletry and personal care zipper bags with feminine hygiene products, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc.
“This sharing box belongs to the community, so stop by Penn Street in Leominster anytime to take what you need or give what you can,” she said.
In what can only be described as strange twist of fate and perhaps karma coming into play, she posted again on Aug. 19, this time saying the original fridge had showed up in her yard.
“Someone returned my original Little Free Pantry today. I was home but didn’t see who dropped it off,” read the post that attracted nearly 100 reactions, including the wow and love buttons hit multiple times and dozens of comments including “The guilt got to them” and “Odd circumstances, but glad it was returned! You are doing a great thing, hopefully someone learned to keep their hands off what’s not theirs.”
O’Neill said on Thursday that she was “really surprised and disappointed but mostly just confused” when she first discovered the fridge was gone.
“My initial thought was that it was stolen but after contemplating it a bit more, I realized it may have just been an honest mistake,” she said. “I reached out to the local community via the Leominster FB groups and within hours, I was receiving offers for a replacement for the pantry.”
She said she was blown away by the “amazing Leominster community,” who helped her replace the missing pantry with a new one “almost immediately.”
“My husband raised up my existing library so that the new pantry could fit snugly underneath and this time we secured it so that there wouldn’t be any confusion as to whether or not the pantry itself was free for the taking,” O’Neill said. “I also received offers from many Leominster residents to help me restock the new pantry. Many people reached out just to give support and share kind words and stories of how special the library and pantry are to them and their families.”
She was inspired to erect a Little Free Library in 2020 “when everything shut down” due to the pandemic and she suddenly found herself with the extra time to bring her vision to life.
“I’ve been an early childhood educator for decades and having a Little Free Library in which I could share books with others has always been a dream of mine,” O’Neill said. “I found an old wine refrigerator at a yard sale that summer and the idea for the set-up and design of my library began. I wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing but also functional, so the wine refrigerator is perfect for keeping the books dry and protected during crazy New England weather.”
She installed the cheerful robin’s egg blue hued library and about a year later she found a mini refrigerator and decided to utilize it as a Little Free Pantry, “a zero-barrier access point” where anyone can take things like non-perishable food items and personal care products – or leave items for others in need.
“I am so thankful to everyone in this community for supporting and utilizing these sharing boxes in an effort to encourage literacy and battle food insecurity,” O’Neill said.
She said the both the library and pantry are “community-based sharing boxes” in which anyone can take what they need or give what they can, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and as such they “belong to the community.”
“I am so blessed to be in a position that I can be of service to the people in my hometown,” the generous city resident said. “As an educator and book lover, it makes me so happy to see the books coming and going each week. Being the steward of this library and pantry has been so rewarding. I’ve been seeing Little Free Libraries all over town lately, love that the movement is growing!”
O’Neill said she’s grateful that it all worked out thanks to the generosity of community members and after the original fridge pantry “mysteriously reappeared in front of my house.”
“It looked like someone had attempted to repair it, as it was not a working refrigerator to begin with. I guess when they realized that it was not a functional refrigerator, they decided to return it. I’m still a little perplexed by the whole thing but I’m glad that whoever did take it tried to do the right thing by returning it in the end.”
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