FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ A trailer filled with toys meant for children battling cancer is back where it belongs in North Miami and two men have been accused of stealing it.
Dudley Merus, 30, of Miami and Endy Merus, 25, of North Miami, were taken into custody at the scene, Sunrise Police Officer Chris Piper said. The men are related but exactly how is unclear, the officer said.
The two were booked into a Broward County jail. Both face a charge of grand theft greater than $20,000 and less than $100,000. On Tuesday afternoon, they were each in the process of securing a $5,000 bond, according to the jail website.
The trailer is normally pulled by an SUV with a Mystic Force Foundation decal bearing a picture of the young son that Sylvia Vanni lost to cancer.
First thing Monday, a friend told Vanni that the trailer was not parked in its usual place near her home.
"Our trailer that was stolen from the front of our house in our guard-gated community was filled with toys for our kids battling cancer," she said.
Vanni spent the bulk of the day filing a police report, printing up posters, calling news outlets and blasting social media with images of the missing trailer.
The effort paid off Monday night, she said, with a call from Sunrise police that her foundation's trailer was found in that city.
"I am ecstatically happy and I am so thankful to friends who actually saw the trailer and called the Sunrise Police Department," Vanni said.
The tip sent plainclothes detectives to a storage shed behind a house, where they watched two men unloading boxes, bags and bins from inside the trailer, according to arrest reports.
The owners of the home in front of the shed had nothing to do with the alleged theft, Piper said Tuesday.
In the middle of the night, Vanni went to where the trailer and her belongings were found and "recovered everything," Piper said. "The lady was very happy to get her stuff back."
Vanni is the co-founder and executive director of the Mystic Force Foundation, which raises money for cancer research and regularly sponsors fun nights at hospitals where donated toys are provided for children with cancer.
"All of these toys help these kids who spend weeks and months at a time in-patient," Vanni said. "They get to have fun and be kids for one night and forget everything they're going through."
For Vanni, the effort is personal. She and her husband launched the foundation after her son Salvatore died of neuroblastoma in 2011, one month shy of his eighth birthday. He had first been diagnosed at the age of 4.
