Items gone from 'Toot' apartment complex

HONOLULU, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Thieves stole a birdbath, table set and plant from outside the Honolulu apartment complex of presidential hopeful Barack Obama's grandmother, a resident said.

The apparent robbery, discovered after Obama visited his ailing maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham last week, "stoops to the absolute lowest of the community," said Thomas Stocks, a 47-year-old retired insurance agent.

"You can't believe that they would steal everything that wasn't nailed down, just as a souvenir," he told The Honolulu Advertiser.

Stocks, who helps care for the grounds as a hobby, said he wants everything brought back, no questions asked.

A heavy clamshell birdbath -- now gone from its stone stand -- "was huge," Stocks said. "You could pull a disk carrying it down the street."

An old glass table and four companion chairs that previously sat in the middle of the lobby had been "used every day by a little old man and his wife, who would sit at that table, or used to, and talk story after they got their mail," Stocks said.

And "Who would take a plant?" Stocks asked.

The building's resident manager did not return messages from the Advertiser seeking comment.

The disappeared items had little monetary worth, but lots of practical and sentimental value for the building's residents, Stocks said.

"Now they're all gone," he said. "Who would do such a thing?"