Theft of robot, tools cripples Cupertino high school team
A team of students from Cupertino’s Monta Vista High School who participated in a Utah robotics competition over the weekend had their robot stolen, along with tens of thousands of dollars in tools.
Around 50 Monta Vista students had contended against 51 other teams in the Utah regional FIRST Robotics Competition on Saturday. They won the entrepreneurship award, and the students’ robot, the El Toro XXI — a hat tip to Monta Vista’s school mascot, the Matadors — helped the team advance to the semifinals, ultimately placing seventh in the contest.
After the competition Saturday, the 120-pound El Toro XXI
was put into a trailer attached to a truck. John Yelinek, a team mentor, parked the trailer about 7 p.m. behind a Country Inn and Suites in West Valley City, Utah.
The next morning he discovered that the entire trailer, including the robot and tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools, was gone. The robot cost $4,000, but the program’s overall budget was $40,000 to $50,000, which includes tools, advertising and travel costs, Yelinek said.
“It’s devastating,” he said.
Donations from Google and other companies, as well as from parents, helped fund the robotics team. Yelinek estimated that the team will need roughly $30,000 to build another robot and replace the tools they lost.
West Valley City police said security footage shows a blue truck towing the Cupertino team’s locked trailer out of the Country Inn and Suites parking lot. However, the actual theft was not captured on video because there are no security cameras in part of the lot, Yelinek said.
He scoured the Salt Lake City area Sunday to see if the thieves might have abandoned the trailer, but the trailer and El Toro XXI have yet to be found.
“There’s a lot that is gone,” Yelinek said. “The kids put their heart and soul into building this robot ... and just had it taken away from them.”
El Toro XXI was expected to participate in another robotics competition in three weeks in Boise, Idaho. Now the team is hoping someone will return the robot or provide enough funds to help them build another one in time for the Boise competition.
The students, who are part of a larger, 120-member team, have been working on the robot since January, meeting three to four times a week, Yelinek said. As the competition got closer, they met on weekends, sometimes working 10 a.m. to midnight, he added.
“They’ve taken all our tools, all our parts,” Yelinek said. “We’ve got to start over and figure out how to put this all together to do it.”