When Yanni Tempelis arrived at his place of business, the Pig Café, in Troy around 4:45 a.m. Monday, he noticed the 20-foot customed catering trailer was not in its usual place. At first, he thought someone was playing a prank.

“I looked all around the building and didn’t see it,” he said. “I looked again and that’s when I realized that somebody had stolen the trailer, so I called the police.”

Tempelis had locked all doors to the trailer and the hookup was locked.

“I was baffled,” he said. “The trailer was there at 8 p.m. Sunday and gone when Danny Boutwell came to run his bread route at 3 a.m. Monday. Some time in between, somebody had hooked up to the trailer and pulled it off. I’m still baffled that someone could do that with it locked.”

Tempelis said everything necessary for his catering business was locked in that trailer.

“Everything we need for catering was in there, ” he said. “We are fortunate that we have the van that we use for catering smaller events. But we use the trailer for the bigger events and it was packed with everything we would need for events up to 500 people.”

Tempelis said he has little hopes of the trailer being found.

“I’m sure the Troy Police will do their best to find the trailer and who did this,” he said. “But trailers don’t have titles so there is no way to trace it. Somebody could be down in Florida or somewhere else right now attempting to sell it, if it’s not already been sold. It would be easy cash for them, but it is a big loss for us.

“But what can you do? You just have to keep moving ahead. We’ll have to do what we can with what we have for now.”

Tempelis said in times past he thought nothing of leaving the trailer unlocked with all of the catering equipment and supplies inside.

“You can’t do that anymore,” he said. “Even if you lock everything up, someone can still come and take what you have.”