Mentor award stolen
The VTSU Castleton Mentorship Program used to be booming with many mentors who would go out to Castleton Elementary School for one hour a week to help mentor students and lend a helping hand to them.
In 2014, the Mentorship Program received a Community Partnership award for the amazing work it has done with Castleton Elementary and during this time the Department of Education took it over.
For years, this framed award was kept in Administrative Assistant Kathrine Spaulding’s office proudly resting on her bookshelf. But one day, she said she realized this wasn’t an award for just her to be able to view because it was an award that was given to students for hard work and dedication to the mentorship program.
So, she decided to hang it up in the Hallway of the Education Department offices where everyone could see it and celebrate the students who received it.
But one recent day, the award just went missing from its rightful place in the Hallway.
“I just noticed because there was a scuff on the wall and I was like oh, what’s that? And then I just seemed to be like, ‘oh what happened to the award,’” Spaulding said.
It had been taken off the wall and has been missing ever since. Spaulding did make a report with Public Safety to see if they could track down who took, it but nothing has come from it so far.
“It could’ve been anybody, but I don’t know when it was taken,” Spaulding said.
At first, the Education Department suspected that maybe when a package was being brought through it was knocked down, and someone cleaned it up that night, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
Spaulding said this award has a lot of meaning to the Mentorship Program participants because it was given during the peak of the program. They went from having 60 mentors to having only seven after COVID took over all our lives.
“I just don’t know. It’s so random. I think of all the things they could take, and they saw the award and just took it off the wall,” Spaulding said.
Spaulding is hoping anyone with any information will come forward or even the person who took it will be willing to come forward and bring it back.
“It doesn’t matter who took it at this point, if we could just get it back, I mean that’s the biggest thing because it was an honor to get an award to begin with,” Spaulding said.
She said they don’t want to punish whoever took it; they just want it back. Since the students who have received the award are long gone, it is an important piece to remember the remarkable mentors who deserved this award.
“Why would you do that, unless if it was a prank or someone just horsing around or whatever. But there’s meaning behind it, it just sat in my office for the longest time and I said to the mentor leaders it’s not my award. It’s for the students really,” Spaulding said.
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