Here's Stranger Genius Rodrigo Valenzuela, describing being robbed while sleeping in Costa Rica, where he's shooting a project called Maria TV:
He emailed the full sorry and scary story—sorry because of the art and equipment loss (I'd really like to see Maria TV completed), scary because he's stranded:
When we arrived to Costa Rica, After 6 days of solid buses riding and immigration searches (Nicaragua-Costa Rica border is the worst!) we felt sleep really fast. The house has 12 people, Anastasia, Zane and me sleeping on the living room they broke in during the night taking 4 mac books, 3 iphones, my cellphone was 10 inch from my face! my backpack had every Cameras, passport, credit cards, etc... they even took time to unplug the chargers and take them. When we woke up the door was wide open and everything gone. The police is shitty.. there is like 3 "kind of police services" the locals, the police for tourist, and Investigation police....that is like 1 hr away. We went there and they still use type writers ...paper work is piling up from floor to ceiling (walls of it!) so I dont have too much hope for them. I call this weekend and they dont work saturday or sunday!
I wanted to take like 15 day to get back and shoot more but now I have to wait for the USA embassy (the chilean consulate can do nothing)!
Valenzuela specifically lost 5D and Pentax 67 cameras, all his audio gear, memory cards, and Green Card—"all of my worldly possessions, as well as my livelihood." He is stuck in Costa Rica at the moment. For ID, he has his driver's license and nothing more. I'm imagining he'll get approximately zero of his stuff back. Donate to his Indiegogo campaign here and send out some kind of prayer for, um, compassionate border guards? We are so sorry, Rodrigo.
