FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – There's a neighborhood crime alert in Fernandina Beach, where a young family was victimized by a thief Sunday morning.
Now, the Tomberlins are asking for whoever ripped them off to simply return their tools.
The Tomberlins are building their dream home, but are trying to make it through a tough time.
Stephanie and Christopher Tomberlin's 5-year-old daughter, Addison, is fighting through nearly two years of treatment for a rare form of leukemia.
While Addison, "Addy," is doing OK now, she almost didn't make it last fall during aggressive chemotherapy.
"It saved her life, but it literally almost killed her. So we thought, felt like if she only had a little bit of time left, we wanted her to be happy and out of the hospital," Stephanie told News4Jax on Monday. "But luckily, she has done so well."
Stephanie got emotional as she talked about the health of her daughter and about the well-being of the entire family, including a 2-year-old girl and a child on the way due Tuesday.
"You get to the point where you're in survival mode, and any little thing that happens out of the plan is devastating," she said.
With the cost of cancer treatments and the loss of income for the Stephanie, who worked as a nurse, while talking care of Addy, Stephanie's husband and his father decided to construct a home on their own.
Christopher's father, Robert, is retired and Christopher works on the house after working his full-time job.
But construction was at a standstill on Monday.
Video from Sunday morning shows someone breaking in and driving away with the trailer on the Tomberlins' property.
"All of the fixtures for the plumbing in the house, everything was in that trailer," Stephanie said. "You know, we're not irresponsible people. We have it locked up, and it's been out here every day for a year."
One of Tomberlins' friends told News4Jax, "This family can't take much more," referring to the hardships they’ve encountered.
But Stephanie said they’ll have a hard time “taking” anything. They just want to forge ahead and complete what they’re working so hard to build.
"To have gone through what we've gone through and just feel like we're constantly being hit with something when all we want to do is, like, get back up on our feet, it's hard," she said.
The Tomberlins have to replace equipment and some of the building supplies that were inside the trailer. Until they can either replace or recover the items, they're in a tough spot.