TACOMA, Wash. — A Tacoma business says they'll have to close down operations for a while after a manager says thieves wiped them out.
They got away with thousands of dollars of laser-tag equipment from a company called High Trek Laser Tag, which had set up a relatively new site in Tacoma.
The site was at Swan Creek Park, and the business was located in the park -- run out of a shipping container on an outdoor course near the 4000 block of East T Street in Tacoma. The manager says the thieves got by a gate that seals off the park, and knew exactly where to go to find the outdoor course early Friday around 2:45 a.m.
Matthew Arthur says working on the outdoor business meant working with the surroundings; High Trek Laser Tag managed to do just that in Swan Creek Park.
He says the group built their course in the environment, kept their equipment, computers, batteries, even a solar panel at the shipping container that functioned as a de facto storefront, only to see it all cleaned out early Friday. "We worked really hard, spent a lot of time and invested a lot.”
Arthur says the shipping container let the business run on remote from this park.
He says thieves cut off the locks, tampered with the alarm, and took over a dozen high-tech taggers. He says their laser tag system used edge software, access points, utility boxes and the taggers as a whole unit or not at all. "These are so unique, you're not just going bring them to a pawn shop. I mean nobody’s going to know what to do with them.”
For High Trek Laser Tag it means their Tacoma tagging course will close for now.
Seth Doull and Katie Dean were riding through the park when they stopped to talk to KIRO 7’s crew covering the story.
They admitted that they've seen laser tag crews using the park, and that it’s become a bit of a fixture. Doull was upset the gear was stolen, shuttering a business built for the park.
“It’s disappointing. ... The more people that use it (the park), you see families out here, it's just a real positive thing.” Dean says the park has had a positive impact overall. “I know the crime has gone down since they built the park.”
Arthur says he met police Friday morning, and admits this is a setback; but he also says just getting this job helped him change the course of his own personal life. “I was homeless and using drugs and then went through a program.”
He says he met the owner and boss of High Trek as he made his way through his treatment and job training program and that they struck up a friendship that lead his now boss to offer him a job, “He just gave me this opportunity and jumped on it.”
His personal journey means the theft has an even greater impact, since he was working and trying to establish the business in Tacoma.
Despite the incident and the items being taken, Arthur hopes to bring it back to Tacoma.
“I’ve been through so many different things, that when things like this happen ... with where I'm at in life I know how to handle it a lot better.”
Arthur says he'll keep working at other locations and hopes the police investigation will track down those responsible.
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