Its mission is to serve the poor and needy in our community, but once again, the Westbury Neighborhood House, ironically located just a few steps from our village hall, has been victimized by vandals.

Donated clothes lay strewn across the front porch of the Westbury Neighborhood House. Photo by Daniel J. McCue

On Wednesday morning, when Neighborhood House Executive Director Ruth Pelligrino and her staff arrived at their office, located in a stately house at 334 Winthrop Street, they found the front porch and yard littered with vandalized donations.

"Clothes, empty boxes, and other donated items, items which had been left unattended on our front porch by generous donors, were everywhere, having been rifled through and a number of things taken," Mrs. Pelligrino said.

"We do what we can to inform donors that they shouldn't just leave things here when the office is closed, but still we can't seem to get that message across," she continued. "Unfortunately, while some are trying to commit a generous act, by leaving items here - during the night, for instance - they are really attracting vandalism and theft to our facility."

Though there hasn't been a major incident of this kind for a number of months, Mrs. Pelligrino said that more minor incidents of vandalism are commonplace at the Neighborhood House.

"We always assume that the persons committing these acts need what they are taking, but that still doesn't make it any less difficult to deal with," she said. "You know, it starts out as a little thing, and then just gets worse and worse."

Asked how she intends to handle the latest incident - beyond contacting the police - Mrs. Pelligrino was momentarily at a loss.

"You hate to penalize people, but maybe if we had our clients clean this up before they were served - and I'm not saying it was one of our regular clients who did this - perhaps the word will go out in our local neighborhoods that this kind of act won't be tolerated and really hurts everyone.

"I don't know," Mrs. Pelligrino said. "It just kind of makes your heart sink."