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This article was co-written by Tom Mattausch, who shared the truth of his grandfather, Clayton Potter Dick.

I walked out of Stone’s Throw Coffee and Market with two hours of stories still ringing in my head. Wilma and her son Tom Mattausch had just finished telling me about their family patriarch’s transformative landscaping venture and the relic that was their touchstone to him: their beloved, battle-scarred 1979 Ford F-250 known simply as “The Beast.” It was a 47-year-old working truck, modified with a dump-bed feature, and most notably, a living, working heirloom full of family history. Was.

Tom has lived between Wallingford and Green Lake for all his 44 years, and as we talked, I kept coming back to the same thought: property crime doesn’t just take things—it takes stories, memories, and emotional ballast with it. And in Seattle, ranked #4 nationwide for overall crime and #3 for property crime on the FBI’s 2024 lists, the toll silently piles up.

On January 12th or 13th, The Beast disappeared from N 50th Street and Stone Way North. It was found on January 15th by some helpful and enterprising young men responding to Tom’s $300 reward for information on Nextdoor, dumped in Woodland Park, burned out, and defaced with “F–K SPD” spray-painted large, proud, and twice. After finding the truck, the family made a decision: they weren’t done. They pooled together an additional $4,700 reward for the arrest of the person or people who stole and burned it. The amount isn’t random: it’s $100 for each of the truck’s 47 years. When I asked Tom why they’d offer $5,000 over an old work truck, he was blunt: “We’re outraged. Whoever did this will continue to hurt our community until something changes in their life. We’re offering this reward to make that change happen, also to make a statement: crimes against property won’t be ignored.” The family knows that property crimes rarely rise to the top of Seattle’s understaffed police priorities, but that doesn’t make the loss any easier. They believe that if the word is spread throughout the community, someone who knows something will come forward and claim the reward. Contact Crime Stoppers via their website or by calling 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

To an outsider, The Beast was just an impressively ugly, aging Ford. But to the Dick family, it was the last tangible thread tying them to family patriarch Clayton Potter Dick, who founded Dick’s Landscaping in 1951. Clayton’s story is one of grit, exodus, and relative salvation in Seattle. Born in Entiat, Washington, he worked as a ranch hand, mill worker, and orchard-thinning pruner before heading to Seattle in 1951. He used his orchard-honed pruning skills to build a landscaping business that eventually served high-profile clients, including the Gates family and “little Billy,” as Clayton called him.

That blue-collar toil allowed him to bring his wife and five children out of their plumbing-free two-room house in Omak, Washington, over the mountains and into a stable new life in Seattle. Emblematic of that success, Tom explained, “In 1979, my grandfather bought this truck brand new off the showroom floor, slapped some shag carpet on the dashboard for style, and put it to work at his prospering business.”

After retiring in 1991, Clayton turned his energy toward his own garden and koi pond, greeting strangers passing by and inviting them in to enjoy the fish. He caught the attention of KING 5 News, which produced this feature on him in the 90s:

He passed away in 1996, but The Beast kept rolling for another 30 years. The truck lived on as a shared family tool, hauling furniture, landscaping materials, and memories. It helped Tom with a gig clearing out the Southgate Roller Rink, and transporting river rock from a Granite Falls quarry for his earliest Gaudi-esque fountains and art installations. Regularly, it chugged dutifully around Wallingford and Ballard in service of the family rental properties. Miriam Dick, Clayton’s daughter, summed up the family’s feelings: “It will be a big loss to our remaining family.” Wilma, Clayton’s daughter and Tom’s mother, put it more painfully: “When we first found that the truck had been set on fire in Woodland Park, it felt like a loss of a member of our family.”

As if losing the truck wasn’t bad enough, the family received notice that the burned-out vehicle could trigger parking enforcement action. They were told the truck needed to be removed by January 20th, or it would be towed at their expense. Victims paying for the aftermath of their own victimization—an unfortunate but not unfamiliar theme in Seattle crime stories.

Two separate police reports were filed on this incident: one for theft and another for arson. Around the same time, a stolen Toyota 4Runner showed up crashed at N Whitman Avenue and N 39th Street, its glovebox autographed with another “F–k the police” signature. Does this give us any clue about the perpetrator(s), who may just be joyriding and sticking it to our local police?

I reached out to Councilmember Maritza Rivera (the theft occurred in her district) and Councilmember Dan Strauss (the arson occurred in his). Rivera’s office replied with a boilerplate email, then a staffer asked to talk. Strauss’s chief of staff replied on January 20th, saying they would check with SPD for updates. As of January 30th, I’m still waiting for more information. But in a city where property crime often feels invisible, even a reply starts to feel like something.

I also reached out to our Seattle Police Crime Prevention Coordinator, Katelyn Yep, who covers the North Precinct west of I-5. She made me feel like someone cared, and offered this information about what she and her partner on the east side of I-5, Ana Carpenter, do:

• Security Assessments utilizing Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles of homes, businesses, schools, houses of worship, and parks
• Attend and present at community meetings and events
• Assist with the implementation of new Block Watch groups
• Present Personal Safety Trainings (not a de-escalation or self-defense training)
• Communicate with communities regarding crime prevention and community events
• Develop and implement new programs and crime prevention strategies
• Work with other city agencies to address crime hot spots and repeat locations

It’s not a fix-all, but it is a resource many residents have never heard of.

One of the most interesting threads in my conversation with Tom and Wilma was justice itself. I suggested that if the $4,700 reward leads to an arrest, restorative justice could be in the form of landscaping work in Woodland Park—wheelbarrow, dirt, sweat, and all—echoing the kind of labor Clayton once did. Maybe then the offender(s) would appreciate how helpful a dump truck can be when you’re doing productive work for your community.

There’s no insurance coverage for this theft and arson, but even if there was, a check can’t recreate an heirloom. Sometimes the losses that hit hardest aren’t the ones with the most value, they’re the ones that carry stories. Last week, Seattle lost one of those.