EVERETT — Dr. Brent Kellogg has dealt with his share of adversity in 36 years of running his Silver Lake dental office.
There was a fire, a flood caused by a broken pipe and the time a woman crashed her car into his building.
Nothing prepared him for what he discovered Monday.
Thieves over the weekend crawled beneath his building to cut and steal copper pipe essential to running his practice. When he turned on a faucet Monday morning, there was no water.
He initially thought there was a break in the water line. Police and a Snohomish County Public Utility District worker investigated. They explained it wasn’t a broken pipe, but missing pipes.
“I was shocked,” Kellogg said.
Kellogg believes it was the work of scrap metal thieves trying to raise money for drugs. He wonders how they move their stolen wares.
“Who is buying it for cents on the dollar so they can get a drug fix?” he asked.
On Tuesday, Kellogg was going over estimates from plumbers. It will take a week to replace the pipes as well as duct work and make other repairs.
His office has had to cancel and reschedule 200 appointments. Sixteen employees, himself included, are affected.
Between the repairs and lost revenue, he calculates the copper theft could cost up to $100,000.
There was an alarm on the main floor of the building, but not for the space underneath.
Adding insult to injury, the thieves even stole the dental office’s blue recycling bin, presumably to hide and roll away the pilfered pipe.
It’s not the first time that neighborhood has been hit.
In March, several air conditioning units were stolen from nearby Silver Lake businesses off 19th Avenue SE, Everett police officer Aaron Snell said. The units contain copper, which is sold on the scrap metal recycling market.
“This is the first instance of copper plumbing theft we have had in a while,” Snell said.
Scrap metal is more than an $87 billion industry each year in the United States. Thieves follow the market and know the metal can be hard to trace.
In Snohomish County over the years, crooks have stolen church bells, funeral urns, bronze vases from grave sites, catalytic converters from cars, brass fittings for firefighting, sewer grates, manhole covers, copper cable wire used for Internet access and even a 3,121-pound propeller.
Often, the damage left behind far exceeds the amount of money gained from a theft.
In 2013, for instance, the PUD saw more than $117,000 in damage to equipment while the actual value of the metal stolen was less than $1,000.
In February, thieves broke into Everett Memorial Stadium. They pulled roughly $11,000 worth of copper wire from underground. The wire was part of the stadium’s outdoor lighting system.
From his Silver Lake dental office, Kellogg said it could have been worse.
The thieves could have caused an explosion if they damaged the nitrous oxide and oxygen pipes beneath the building. The thieves apparently knew what they were doing.
“It’s a maze of copper pipe down there,” he said. “They are smart. Why can’t they make it in the real world?”
For now, Kellogg just wants to get back to business.
He’s making some changes, including replacing much of the copper pipe with plastic.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.
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