Couple spent years saving for dream and in seconds it was gone

Clair Kami said her heart has been completely broken by the loss

A couple who saved for nine years to be able to afford their dream had it snatched away within a matter of seconds. Clair Kami, 31, and her partner Martin Chidlow, 44, both from Huyton, bought a van earlier this year which they spent thousands converting into a campervan.

On July 11 Clair said she dropped their pride and joy campervan at a garage in Vauxhall. The van had failed its MOT and was parked outside on the street when it was stolen at around 2.20pm.

Clair said she doesn’t know how the thieves managed to get away with the van so quickly, because they had taken it without using the key. The 31-year-old said the couple had worked tirelessly to save up for the van since meeting nine years ago and are now “devastated” it has been stolen alongside sentimental items that were inside that belonged to Clair’s late mum and friend.

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She told the Liverpool ECHO: “We had nothing when we first got together, and we have worked our way up to this. We have worked for years of our lives to be able to buy the van, until we were financially stable. We spent about £15,000 of our hard earnt wages on buying it and now it has been taken away from us. It’s awful, there are no words. It’s horrible, I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle at the moment, but we can only hope.”

Clair told the ECHO how she took the van for its routine MOT. She said: “From what we know someone has just jumped in and taken it, the keys are still in the garage, I have held them in my hands. They [the thieves] took it quickly and we don’t know how, there is no spare key.”

Clair said as well as the van there were also a number of sentimental items inside that mean “everything to her”. She added: “It’s little things, to me they are worth everything but to other people they will mean nothing.

“There was a broken locket necklace hanging up inside with a picture of me and my mum, I lost her ten years ago, and we have taken that locket on all our adventures with us so that she can be there. My mum wasn’t well and she was bed bound before she passed, so she couldn’t go anywhere…[the locket] was our way of taking my mum with us, we have taken her everywhere.

“I lost my baby cat in March too – she was my world – she lived up to her name, she was my baby. I had her original paw print cards hung up inside the van, and pictures hanging of her in the van. Then one of my closest friends I lost unexpectedly to cancer six months ago, it was a long painful six month battle for her and there were things of hers in there.

“They were all little things that mean nothing to someone else but everything to me. There was a baby Yoda ornament that was hers, that she gave to me; a knitted heart – it came in two parts, one part went in the coffin with my friend, and one was with me – they are the smallest things that have no value to anyone else, but to me they are everything.”

She added: “The van is so important to us. We had only had it a few months and have done so much to it already to make it feel like a home on wheels. It has completely broken my heart, this year has just been horrible.

“We got it [the van] to get that sense of freedom and to escape everything and the hardships that’s been going on, we have spent nine years together and we have been picking up the pieces of past relationships and financial hardships, and finally got to a point where we could start our relationship and do stuff for us. This van was our start.

“It was always a release every time we were in the van, it was the only time I could relax when I was in it. I feel like I have been robbed of my own freedom. The van itself was metal but the meaning behind it and the things in it was everything. We have been through so much over the years and it was finally that one good thing that we had going for us.”

The couple had been planning to go up to Scotland in the campervan to do the North Coast 500. Clair added: “It hurts that we’re about £15K out of pocket now. I feel broken, completely broken after everything that has happened this year. I think this is the straw that has broken the camel’s back. The one good thing we had has now gone.”

A spokesperson for Merseyside Police said: “We can confirm that we received a report of a stolen Citroen van, in Liverpool, on Thursday 11 July at around 2.20pm. Enquiries are ongoing into the incident and if you have any information, please get in touch by calling 101 or DM @MerPolCC quoting reference number 24000609488.”