SEATTLE — Less than 24 hours after KING 5 aired a story about thieves stealing thousands of dollars worth of equipment from a college engineering club, a local company responded with donations to get the group back on its feet.
"We saw the story last night, and we felt your pain. So we went out and looked through our toolbox and went on a little shopping spree,” Emily Putz-Zupon with United Rentals, Tool Solutions said to the club members. “So we just wanted to donate some gear to get you guys back up and running."
They delivered the tools to the Seattle Pacific University campus on Tuesday.
"Hopefully it feels like Christmas, early Christmas," said Putz-Zupon.
"Today's actually my birthday so this is awesome, thank you so much!” said Kainoa Lee.
On Monday, KING 5 introduced viewers to SPU senior Kainoa Lee. He's the director of a student-run engineering club called Baja SAE which builds off-road vehicles for competitions. It's a passion for these soon-to-be engineers.
Two weeks ago, $8,000 worth of the club's tools were stolen out of this storage container on campus.
"Oh my goodness, I can't wait to open all this stuff up!" said Lee.
Now, Kainoa and his friends can get back to work.
Employees with United Rentals, an equipment rental company in Tukwila, said they saw the club's story on KING 5 Monday night and they wanted to retool these students with hope.
"We started going through our toolboxes to kind of pull together items that we thought would be useful to these guys and when on a little shopping trip this morning to get some equipment,” said Putz-Zupon. “Enough to get them up and running."
The group of college students is now feeling more optimistic about the future of the organization.
"This helps us a lot, we'll get to use these tools, but all three of us are graduating this year,” said Lee. “So you guys aren't only giving to us, you're giving to student teams in the future and hopefully multiple generations of Baja SAE teams."
To support Baja SAE, click here.