Charity’s Christmas gifts for vulnerable youth with disabilities stolen in ‘heartbreaking’ theft

If the thieves had come through the front door, and asked nicely for some food, toys, maybe even underwear, Kirsty Parkes said she “would have packed it up in a bag … and said ‘thank you, have a nice day’”.

Instead, in the early, dark hours of Saturday morning, her charity the Young Adults Disabled Association (YADA) was ambushed.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Charity robbed, leaving vulnerable families to go without at Christmas.

A group of four thieves cut the fence, destroyed a lock on a cargo container and transferred its contents into the outreach charity’s bright orange truck – the group’s makeshift getaway vehicle.

The thieves managed to disable the truck’s tracking system and hot-wire it, before speeding away on Celebration Rd in Sadleir about 2am.

They stole about $5000 worth of donations, which Parkes and her community amassed over several months for the charity — which, at this time of year, focuses solely on providing a sense of Christmas to some of Sydney’s neediest families.

“This one really hurts,” Parkes told 7NEWS. “We’ve had break ins in the past, we’ve had things stolen, you know nothing is unrecoverable.

“This one hurt because it was our Christmas drive, this was what we had for these kids for Christmas … stuff that I’ve personally donated to, the volunteers have donated to.”

She described the loss as “heartbreaking, almost unforgivable.”

“Heartbreaking, because it took so much for us to get so little.”

Parkes was already feeling pressure to cater for the young people in her community, who she said do not celebrate birthdays because their parents don’t have the means.

Now she’s racing against time to replace just a fraction of the stolen donations before the YADA Christmas party on December 15.

Today, detectives canvassed the street looking for security videos of the conspicuous orange truck with the charity’s name and number is plastered on the side.

Security video from YADA shows the group loading the truck before reversing it through the fence.

Parkes suspects the group had been casing the property in the preceding nights.

With the days quickly passing before the charity event, Parkes has a small request to help make a memorable holiday period for some of the state’s most vulnerable.

“We’re not asking people to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars, we just want to make Christmas special, we just want to give these kids core memories,” she said.

To donate to the charity event, more information can be found at communitycafe.org.au.