Steak sauce mystery: Napier family targeted for years by odd deliveries to their home

Lisa O'Connor and her family have had about 13 steak sauce packets delivered to their letterbox in the past two or three years. Photo / Lisa O'Connor

A Napier family who thought they’d been hit by a rare mystery prank are becoming well done with the meaty matter after the pranksters struck not once, not twice, but close to a dozen times.

About 12 or 13 steak sauce packets have been dropped off at Lisa O’Connor’s Tamatea home over the past two years, and her family are still trying to “steak” out who cooked up the prank.

She said she and her family simply thought it was a “weird” one-off incident the first time they received the mysterious delivery.

“A couple of weeks later there was another one just sitting in the mailbox and we thought that was even weirder,” O’Connor said.

She had tried asking her neighbours and others through social media to see if anyone else had experienced the saucy surprise but found that no one knew anything about it.

She said they had a theory for why their household was the only one targeted, but it was quite “out there”.

“It goes back to a family Christmas quite a few years ago and I won’t go into the details of how this line came about but my father did end up saying ‘Tough? Just call me steak.’

“So we’re wondering if it is related to that,” she said.

“We kind of think it has got to be someone that knows us, possibly a sibling but maybe someone from the outer family as well.”

She had no beef with whoever was doing it, but she hoped to one day catch them in the act.

“We do have cameras but unfortunately they haven’t managed to catch anyone yet,” she said.

“Because of the angle and where the vehicles are parked and traffic out on the road and what-not, the cameras haven’t been able to capture anything yet.”

Every delivery was the exact same brand of unexpired Gregg’s Steak Sauce and all except for the most recent one had been unopened.

“We haven’t eaten any of them because A: we are not big fans of steak sauce ourselves and B: we don’t really trust whatever is in it because we don’t know where it is coming from,” she said.

“We have thrown all the other ones away because they were just taking up so much room in the pantry.”

She said the situation had made every walk to the mailbox fun.

“We think it is hilarious, it has become a bit of a family joke and now we just love going out to check the mailbox. It always provides a bit of a laugh.”