Seven stolen laptops were mysteriously returned after a break-in at Queen Charlotte Secondary.
The Macintosh ibooks turned up on the doorstep of school district computer technician James Meszaros around 7:50 pm on Oct. 30.
Mr. Meszaros noticed a strange blue drawstring bag on his front step when he answered the door for another visitor. Inside were the missing computers.
The break in occurred on Oct. 28 around 2:00 am.
An outside camera, pointing at the entrance to the school was covered over, but two perpetrators were seen in date-stamped footage taken on a camera inside the school.
The perpetrators were in the school no more than 10 minutes with the alarm ringing, , said principal Angus Wilson. They opened a locked room and a locked cabinet to get at the laptops, which were brand new to the school.
They then went across the hall to a room where the school's computer server is kept and stole a digital tape back-up.
Mr. Meszaros has a theory that the thieves thought they were taking the video surveillance tape. He voiced this opinion in front of several students on Monday at school. And lo and behold, the computers were on his doorstep later that evening.
The computers were fingerprinted, cleaned and returned to the school on Nov. 3
Mr. Wilson said Macintosh computers are not good things to steal, as they must only be worked on by authorized dealers and each machine is coded.
The laptops, along with 14 others, will be used in the brand new Taay.yaan.nuhl program initiated by the Haida Education Division. They will be used for video editing, internet research, GPS plotting and more.