Lansing’s iconic TARDIS food pantry on Michigan Avenue vandalized

Shelves, lighting and cooler stolen

MONDAY, May 8 — The iconic TARDIS food pantry in front of Everybody Reads bookstore on Michigan Avenue was the target of vandalism overnight. 

Surveillance videos shared by Julia Miller of Punks With Lunch Lansing, a nonprofit organization that helps feed people in need, said the vandal struck at 3:45 this morning. The video shows an unidentified man removing the shelves and tossing them into a rolling garbage bin. The man returned to remove the lighting and cooler, additional video shows. 

The food pantry is designed to look like the police call box made famous as the time machine known as  TARDIS on the British show “Dr. Who.”  

Miller said the food pantry was “extremely” important to the eastside community.

“We get people that all the time, several an hour, from unhoused, to single moms, to senior citizens who are lower income,” Miller said. “People of all demographics that come to either get food or donate food.”

She said she watched a woman with health issues stop at the pantry Sunday to donate, something the woman does “every other day.” 

“She’s got some health issued and can’t do a lot because of that, but helping the TARDIS is some small way she can help folks,” said Miller. 

As the leader of group that tries to minimize police involvement with vulnerable populations, Miller said she does not want people to call the police. 

“We want to know why it happened, and what needs to happen to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said. ”What can we do to help him instead of him doing things like this? We as a community should step up to resolve this instead of resorting to police involvement.”

She asked community members who know who the man is to contact Punks With Lunch through its Facebook page. 

In separate videos, posted to the Eastside Neighborhood Organization Facebook page, Jay Carapellucci shows a man who is dressed similarly to the TARDIS vandal removing his mailbox from the front of his home. The first video shows the man rolling a garbage bin away from the home. A similar rolling bin was used to take the shelves from the TARDIS. The man is also wearing a bag slung over his should in all the videos, as well as a baseball cap. Carapellucci did not immediately respond to a message on Facebook.