Decorations that won Schaumburg award vandalized
Just days after Carolyn Gyurnek won first place in the Schaumburg Park District's Holiday House Decorating Contest, she awoke Tuesday to find the display in her front yard to have been vandalized by what police believe to be more than one person.
“I cried when I saw it this morning,” Gyurnek said. “It took a few people to come and knock my house down. They tried to take baby Jesus but couldn't get the wire cut.”
The Cook County Sheriff's officer who took the report told Gyurnek it looked like it could be the work of college-age kids who were either drunk or high on drugs. A tire track shows where their vehicle was parked on the lawn, and a handprint in the exposed mud shows where one of them stumbled and fell.
Gyurnek's display, built up over the course of many years, features a Santa house, gingerbread house, church and tiny post office built by the carpentry skills of her grandsons.
The post office was turned on its side with the window in its front door broken out. Various toy soldiers and other figurines were knocked down and trampled, the electrical cords that provided their illumination ripped out.
“My two grandsons did such a good job,” Gyurnek said of the display. “Well of course they did, it won first place.”
Vince Kennedy, superintendent of recreation for the Schaumburg Park District, said this was the first time a contestant or winner of the long-running contest had ever suffered such vandalism.
“We've had this contest for many years,” Kennedy said. “It's becoming more and more popular.”
The judges who toured the contestant sites earlier this month picked Gyurnek's unincorporated home tops for its overall theme and the work put into it, Kennedy said.
“Why do they want to destroy?” Gyurnek asked. “This is our savior's birth. I would like to talk to these people about why they did it.”
Gyurnek said her dogs' barking about midnight woke her up and she looked out the window but saw nothing. Now she believes it was the barking that caused the vandals to run off.
As the holidays are still ahead, Gyurnek said she and her grandsons will try to make the best of what remains of the display that originally took three days to assemble.
“I'm just glad they did the judging before this,” she said.