Jim Scholan, who lives east of Durango, has raised questions about security at the Durango-La Plata County Airport after his truck was vandalized in the paid parking lot.
Scholan left his vehicle at the airport for five nights in mid-August. At some point during that time, a tire, a wheel, the brake rotor and the brake caliper were removed from the truck. The anti-lock braking system was gone, Scholan said.
The La Plata County Sheriff’s Office and airport officials said such incidents are rare.
“I’m just flabbergasted,” said Scholan, a retired investigator from the Department of Justice. “I’m sitting there looking, like, ‘There’s no note on the car. How long has this been like this? Nobody notices this?’”
Scholan said he did not receive a call or any notification from the airport notifying him of the damage. Director Tony Vicari said airport staff members do routine patrols of airport grounds, but did not see the tire taken off the vehicle.
Airport staff members checked video surveillance of the parking lot, but because the vehicle was parked between two other vehicles, the incident was not visible on the recording, Vicari said.
“It took someone an hour to do that (remove the tire and parts), Scholan said. “Someone’s out there with a jack, tools, taking my car apart.”
When he talked with the airport’s customer service representative, the agent said people park in the lot at their own risk, Scholan said.
“I might as well park my car on the highway. ... What am I paying for? There’s no security, nothing there,” he said.
The airport maintains the parking lot and is responsible for “doing due diligence to ensure the lot is reasonably secure,” Vicari said. Like all parking lots, the airport cannot guarantee 100% security, he said.
The airport also spent more than $100,000 upgrading surveillance inside the terminal and around the building in 2019. It is incrementally expanding surveillance as the budget allows.
If airport staff members saw significant damage to a vehicle, they would work with law enforcement to figure out what happened and contact the vehicle owner if necessary, Vicari said.
“Honestly, it was a very strange and unusual incident,” he said. “We don’t quite understand what may have happened there.”
Vicari said this type of incident is “exceedingly rare” at the airport. Vicari said he has not seen a similar incident during the six years he has been working at the airport.
Since mid-May, there have been 12 calls at the airport, ranging from citizen assists to overdue rental cars being reported stolen, said Chris Burke, spokesman for La Plata County Sheriff’s Office. He did not find any other reports of vehicle trespass-related calls.
“Certainly, it’s disappointing if there was indeed an incident of vandalism in the airport parking lot,” Vicari said. “We’d hate to see that. It’s terrible. We do not have any sort of pattern or issue of theft or vandalism in the airport parking lot.”
smullane@durangoherald.com
