Student who stole from Utah school 60 years ago makes donation to smooth things over


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HELPER — It's not how you expect a confession to start.

"Dear junior high staff," the letter begins. "One warm spring day, as school was concluding, Mr. Iverson set down a box of sandpaper outside the shop door."

"I thought, 'What in the world?'" said Helper Middle School Principal Mika Salas, who received the letter last week. "As I read more and could understand where he was going, I just thought it was so neat."

The anonymous letter writer "absconded" with the box of sandpaper, even though he or she "didn't need sandpaper" and "didn't know what to do with it."

"Over the years, I knew (my) actions were immature and dishonest," read the letter, which was in an envelope with a St. Louis postmark, but no return address. Inside the envelope there was also a cashier's check for $100 meant "as a replacement for the sandpaper."

"I read it and saw the check and thought, 'Oh, my goodness,'" Salas said. "I just thought it was so neat."


Think back, you know, to something you did and pay it back. Take this as an opportunity to send your old school something, or the person you did wrong or the place. Take it as a moment or an opportunity to pay if forward.

–Helper Middle School Principal Mika Salas


Neat because Iver Iverson taught industrial arts in the Carbon School District from 1941 to 1956, so long ago the school hasn't been able to find a picture of him in its scrapbooks.

The letter doesn't say how much sandpaper was in the pilfered box, and no one at the school knows how much it cost at the time. What is known is that $100 will buy about 100 sheets of sandpaper today.

But Helper Middle School — the name changed from junior high to middle school this year — doesn't have much need for sandpaper these days. The wood shop where Iverson taught all those decades ago is now used for art classes.

So the anonymous donation helped pay instead for the school's quarterly Breakfast of Champions, which honors students with straight A's.

"It bought pancakes and bacon instead of sandpaper, which is just fine," Salas said.

Salas hasn't told her students yet about the anonymous donor's effort to smooth out a rough spot from the past. She believes her kids aren't the only ones who need to hear about it.

"Think back, you know, to something you did and pay it back," she said. "Take this as an opportunity to send your old school something, or the person you did wrong or the place. Take it as a moment or an opportunity to pay if forward."

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