FALLBROOK, Calif. — Joleen Elston loves caring for horses and said she practically lived out her silver Dodge truck that served as an ambulance filled with medicine and expensive X-ray machines and ultrasound equipment that has taken her years to get.
“All my surgery tools and everything are in that thing, I was just really a mobile hospital,” Elston said.
Equine veterinarian of 15 years, Joleen Elston is devastated after someone stole her work truck from her Fallbrook home on Christmas Eve.
"Why would someone want to steal a vet truck you know, when I’m kind of constantly trying to do for other people and trying to be there for animals, so it was just heartbreaking,” said Elston.
Elston filed a report with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department saying at 6:30 a.m. Friday while it was raining hard in Fallbrook, someone broke into her garage on a gated property.
"I actually live up a huge hill, so I cannot believe that somebody jumped our fence, and came all the way in, right past my bedroom,” said Elston.
Elston was just in the garage before the theft and is 7 months pregnant with her first child, a baby boy, due it March. "Baby is okay, I was out in the garage about an hour before it happened, so I just feel really grateful to be alive and not harmed,” said Elston.
But gone is her 2016 Dodge diesel 2500, a large silver four-door truck, and the whole entire bed that had been replaced by a white fiberglass box. The truck has a V for the vet symbol on the back. Elston says her entire career's supplies were inside the stolen truck.
"I have my bandage material, medications, surgery supplies, a refrigerator, centrifuge,” Elston said.
Everything she needs to treat horses was there from dentistry tools, X-ray machine, Ultrasound, laptop, and anesthesia. Equipment, she says, is tough to come by with pandemic shipping delays.
“Syringes, needles and gloves during COVID has been really hard to replace, even if I could buy them tomorrow, it doesn’t mean that I could have them for months, so if they could please just leave it all in there, and turn it over,” Elston said.
Joleen put out of the call to search for her truck on Facebook, with nearly 4,000 shares.
People have written her sightings of the truck in De Luz and Escondido.
"Waiting and praying and hoping that it shows up and something is still left inside,” she said.
Elston says deputies told her four other homes in her Fallbrook area had also been burglarize and another car was stolen just couple miles away from her home. Elston is offering a $2,000 reward of her own money to anyone with good information, you can email her at ElstonVet@gmail.com
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