Copper wire thefts are on the rise, last summer it was from irrigation systems and now it looks to be a whole ‘nother ballgame.

The areas targeted now seem to be ball parks.

A target the Kuehne Family YMCA knows all to well.

“This is the third time it has happened in a year for us,” said Senior Director Dennis Reedy.

This time, the thieves got away with an estimated $250 worth of copper wire.

It’s costing the YMCA 50 times that amount to repair the damage.

“We're over $20,000 in for just the last year replacing vandalism on this as far as the copper,” Reedy said. “We were trying to find some people to come out and replace the wire and were having some problems because we found out there were other diamonds and other situations hit too.”

Since late fall, Shawnee North, Major Palm, Santa Fe One and Two, McDonald Field and all four fields at Oakland Billard have also been hit.

Costing the city more than $40,000.
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“I’ve seen it quite a bit recently on a personal level, business level, we've seen our shop broken into, our shop yard broken into numerous times,” said Tom Schmidtlein whose company Schmidtlein Electric Inc. puts new wire back into some of those vandalized places. “It’s raw material, its a commodity and as that fluctuates so does the value of the scrap copper and so for that reason we're seeing a tremendous influx in theft.”

So much, that people are seeking alternatives like using aluminum wire and directly burying it, to make the hard job of stealing the goods, even harder, so the only stealing going on is the bases.

“I think if these thieves work as hard as what they are to steal this, they could hold down a great job,” Schmidtlein said.

He says a national company Schmidtlein Electric works with tells them Topeka seems to be the only place in the country where copper theft happens so frequently.

An increase in copper prices is mainly to blame for the thefts.

Currently, it is almost $4 a pound when just a few years ago it was $1.