Laveen Art Studio Vandalized: Please Help.

Hello there. My name is Laurie Canfield. I'm an art teacher from Phoenix. After teaching for 16 years, I opened my dream art studio in the Melrose district in 2020. In December 2022, we purchased a property in Laveen to open a second studio. We live and I taught in the Laveen area, and I wanted my community to have the same access to the arts that my other studio patrons do.

We spent almost our entire life savings just to purchase the property. Since then, my husband and I have been working hard to have our new property rezoned to commercial so that we can "officially" open as an art studio. We have been operating as a small home-based business offering a few classes each month at the Laveen site, footing the bill for the mortgage, utilities, upkeep, and renovations until we are able to do so. This has been taking much longer and requiring many more renovations - such as retention ponds for a 100-year flood - that we did not anticipate, so our financial situation has continued to grow more precarious by the month.

On Friday, March 8, we were enroute to a store that carries our products to drop off inventory when we received a phone call from a neighbor of the studio. We share a well, and she suddenly had no water. We told her we were not onsite, so we asked if she could run next door to see if a pipe had burst. A few minutes later, she called back to tell us a stranger was in our building. She said all the doors and windows were open, and when she asked what he was doing there, he told her we "gave him" the house. She was frightened and ran home to contact us. We immediately called 911 and were told MCSO would be enroute. We also headed to the property and arrived before the officers did. We were terrified to discover that the man was still inside the property.

My husband, Wayne, went to the doorway and yelled at the man to come out. He came out wearing one of my Sunshine Sunflower Studio t-shirts and holding a can of spray paint. Wayne managed to lure him away from the studio, so I jumped out of the truck and ran inside to survey the damage and capture it on video. I was heartbroken.

He spraypainted the exterior and interior walls, the floor, the marble tile in the bathroom. He used acrylic pens from my storage room to write all over the exterior doors, the kitchen cabinets, the bathroom mirrors, the walls and the door jambs. He plugged in and turned on the oven and all the burners on the stove. (God bless there was no fire, as items he removed from the kitchen cabinets were close to the stove top). He took everything out of the cabinets, including the shelf liners. He removed all of my decorations from the walls and shelves - things that I have had in my classroom for almost 15 years and were given to me by my mother - things with significant sentimental value as she is now deceased. He even took my diplomas off the wall. Furniture was moved into different rooms and arranged in bizarre stacks. Supplies were dumped all over in random containers. Trash was strewn about the floor. He took all of the sodas and juice boxes out of the fridge, put them in our trash bin, which he also wrote on with acrylic pens. Luckily, he turned on all of our outside water faucets, which ran our well dry and that is how our neighbor was alerted to his presence.

I know that we are very lucky that he was not violent when we encountered him. Although the property was damaged with spray paint and is now a giant mess, nothing major was broken. The sheriff's officers did arrest him for vandalism and burglary.

However, estimates to mitigate the damage are ranging between $8,000 and $10,000. We do not have this extra cash at our disposal, as all of our funds are going into paying the mortgage, utilities and upkeep on the new property. We are unsure if this is covered by our insurance, what our deductible is, or how long it will take to repair. I don't like asking for help, but I don't have any other options at this point. We really need the help of our community to get the studio fixed up and ready for our summer camp preview on Saturday, March 23.

With our obligations of running the original studio in Melrose, our time is limited. I am working on planning a pottery painting event for our community on Thursday, March 28, but that won't fit my deadline for summer camp preview. Any help that can be provided to purchase paint and other materials to clean and fix up the studio would be greatly appreciated.

Teaching art is everything to me. Owning my own studio has been my dream since 2010. Please help me to keep my dream alive. For further info on the damage to our studio, please click here to view the story on AZ Family.