Bell Stolen From Church of Foothills

An antique bell that called congregants to services at Church of the Foothills has been stolen, the church’s pastor said Monday.

The Rev. Samuel Pratts said the bell, which he estimated to be at least 100 years old, was last seen by a troop of Girl Scouts meeting at the church on Glenoaks Boulevard on Friday night. But Saturday morning the bell was gone.

“It’s just a steel bell,” Pratts said. “It’s not a brass bell that you can melt down into something else. It’s the cheapest kind of bell you could get out of a Sears catalog back then.”

The bell had hung in the church tower for 12 years. For the previous 70 it had stood unused atop an old barn owned by an Elkhorn, Wis., farmer. Pratts, visiting family in the area, asked the old man if he could have it.

“If you can get it down, you can have it,” Pratts said the man told him.

In the summer of 1984, the bell rang as part of a citywide celebration of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Pratts said the 200-member congregation is struggling to understand why someone would take their bell.

“The thieves probably don’t realize how important it was to us,” Pratts said. “You kind of have to wonder what kind of people would steal something from the Lord’s house like that.”