EVERETT — George V is missing.
George IV had to come out of retirement. George VI is a work in progress.
The show must go on, even for 8-foot-tall giraffe puppets. George is the namesake and star of the Giraffe &Staff Puppet Company based in Everett.
Puppet show director Sharon Allbright had a meeting Saturday at the Everett Public Library. She kept her purple suitcase of puppets in her truck.
When she got back to the parking garage, “my truck had all the doors open and the back was up and all my equipment was lying on the ground, the stuff they didn’t take,” she said. “They just ransacked it. I just felt so violated.”
George was gone.
She reported the crime to police Saturday. She spent much of Sunday being angry. By Monday, she made a decision.
“I’m not going to cancel our shows,” she said. “I just really pray that I can make it work.”
She enlisted the help of another puppeteer, Stephen Sweeney, her husband of 23 years and an electrical engineer with a job in aerospace. The couple has lived in Everett since 2005.
In the 1980s, Allbright worked as a journalist and owned a store selling coffee beans in southern California. She didn’t like being in one building all day.
On a whim, she told co-workers, “‘I think I will travel around the world and do puppet shows,’ and I laughed and everyone laughed.”
That night, though, when she opened a newspaper, there was an advertisement from the local library, looking for a puppeteer.
She found her writing skills came in handy creating original plays. She started performing at libraries, schools, shopping centers and children’s parties.
She was hooked on the idea of children coming to the library, seeing something fun and becoming interested in books as a result.
“The kids just crack up during the whole show,” she said.
To learn puppet making, she read books and attended national puppet festivals.
“I even met Jim Henson, which was a biggie, of course,” she said.
Once, talking to artists on a puppet show crew, Allbright mentioned that “a giraffe can stand up above the stage. It would be so impressive.”
The artists told her to start creating one, and the first George was born.
“It wasn’t the most charming giraffe, but everyone who came into the studio and the kids, they loved it the best,” she said.
These days, George’s friends include a raccoon, a bear and mice.
“He’s the star of the show,” she said of the giraffe. “He’s just a really easy-mellow-going guy, and he dances.”
The puppets are made with cloth, foam, faux fur and other materials. Some of the puppets stolen over the weekend had elaborate inner mechanisms.
Each one was handmade with countless hours of work.
Also stolen was expensive sound equipment and microphones, and a box containing party favors, balloons and crayons.
Friday is the company’s first scheduled show since the theft. It will take another two weeks to put the final touches on the new puppets, Allbright said.
She is hopeful the stolen puppets will show up. They can’t be of much use to the thieves.
Allbright is encouraging anyone who may know what happened to George to call the puppet company at 425-259-3988.
There is no information on any suspects, according to the police department.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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