MONTEREY — It seems Dennis the Menace just can’t catch a break. And the freckle-faced troublemaker isn’t even the one to blame. Again.
A life-size bronze statue of Hank Ketcham’s cartoon creation has, for the second time, vanished from Dennis the Menace Playground in Monterey. City officials announced Tuesday that the beloved re-creation, a hallmark of El Estero Park on Pearl Street, was cut and stolen over the weekend.
It was gone by late Saturday morning.
The disappearance is baffling — and familiar. First stolen back in 2006, a newly recast statue was erected and placed at the city playground in 2007. Anchored in cement rather than situated with nuts and bolts, city officials thought the replacement would stand a better chance against vandalism. And it did for the last 15 years, until thieves used a grinder to slice the statue at the foot.
“I’m just shocked and disappointed and appalled,” Monterey Mayor Clyde Roberson said over the phone Wednesday. “It’s an insult to Dennis the Menace and an insult to the community-at-large, who love Dennis.”
Monterey police were notified of Dennis’ most recent kidnapping early Sunday afternoon by a city employee visiting the park playground with their children, Lt. Jake Pinkas said Wednesday. Asked when the statue was taken, Pinkas couldn’t give an exact time but said “it’s possible it happened during the daylight and no one saw it or heard it.”
Hoping to recover the statue, Pinkas said police are currently sifting surveillance footage from surrounding areas for any leads. Investigators have also asked scrap yards and metal recyclers to let them know if any chunks of bronze that have been melted down turn up. Meanwhile, police are likewise looking to the public for help, encouraging community members to share credible leads they have on who is responsible.
As of Wednesday morning, police have not received any tips, Pinkas said.
The inaugural statue was installed in 1988. The sculpture was one of four original copies made out of a mold created by Academy Award-winning artist Wah Ming Chang. One statue went to Dennis the Menace Playground before disappearing, while another went to the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. A third statue went to the Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida. The last went to the Pebble Beach home of Ketcham, who lived on the Monterey Peninsula before his death in 2001.
Chung asked in his will that the molds for the statue be destroyed after his death. He died in 2003, but, thanks to Ketcham’s estate, another mold was created from the statue standing in the cartoonist’s backyard. That enabled the city to replace the original with a fifth statue, that’s now also gone.
“It’s just unbelievable,” said Roberson, whose wife was Ketcham’s personal secretary for 35 years. “We know the Ketcham family really well. It was important to his family to give that gift of the statue to the community.”
In 2015, the city thought it had found its beloved 1988 Dennis, when a copy of the statue was located at a scrap-metal company in Orlando. The statue was sent back to Monterey for a hopeful homecoming, but it was the wrong Dennis. As it turns out, the Dennis the Menace statue from the Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital also vanished sometime in the mid- to late-1990s, when a park at the hospital was renovated into a Disney theme.
To clarify the returned sculpture’s origins, the city worked with one of the people involved with casting the original. Ultimately, it was determined the statue wasn’t the one belonging to Monterey. The city kept the Florida statue, with the Orlando hospital’s blessing, just somewhere else in town while the 2007 replacement stayed put at El Estero.
A decade and half later, Roberson is anxious to see that substitute, or some form of Dennis the Menace, take its rightful place on Pearl Street again.
“It’s just appalling that someone would do that much work to take it,” Roberson continued. “And what on earth do they want with it? Frankly, it’s unbelievable. … I’m looking forward to seeing Dennis return to Dennis the Menace (Playground) in some way or another.”
Anyone with information on the statue’s location is encouraged to call the Monterey Police Department at (831) 646-3830 or the confidential tip line at (831) 646-3840.
rnFor the second time, a bronze Dennis the Menace statue has been stolen from the Dennis the Menace Playground in Monterey. (Tess Kenny/Monterey Herald)
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