Paihia food truck La Cocina stolen, found 20km away after community effort

It was never going to be easy stealing a two-tonne bright green food truck from Northland.

Stealing a two-tonne, neon green food truck from a tight-knit Northland community was never going to be a straight forward operation.

But that didn’t stop thieves from trying their luck and making off with the Mexican food truck called La Cocina from Paihia in the early hours of October 21.

Owner Richard Fox, who runs the family-owned business with his mum Cecilia Escobar, said the truck was stolen from his driveway around 1am.

Thieves would have been on his property for some time while they hitched the truck to their vehicle and drove off into the night, he said.

A local CCTV company found footage of the truck heading south the same morning.

“You can’t miss this trailer it’s so big,” Fox said.

“The audacity of taking something 6m long and 2m high weighing 1800kg.

“You wouldn’t miss this thing going anywhere. It’s absolutely massive.”

The food truck was custom built in Houston in the United States.

Fox and his mother have been parking it at Te Haumi Beach, festivals, markets, and events around Northland for the last eight years.

Richard Fox’s food truck La Cocina was stolen from his driveway in Paihia and found a couple of days later.

They serve Mexican food such as nachos, burritos and quesadillas, along with hotdogs, bacon and egg rolls, and fish and chips.

It was found around 72 hours later about 20km away, just south of Kawakawa.

Fox thanked the police and the community for their efforts in retrieving the food truck, which included hundreds of people sharing the incident on social media.

Around $2000 worth of damage was done to the exterior fenders and lights, and numerous cooking items were missing, including quality knives and stainless-steel serving trays.

Fox said he’s glad it has been returned but it’s left him feeling “violated”.

“It’s a total violation of your privacy.

“This is not something you take on a whim. This was a preplanned thing.

“Something needs to be done about the level of crime in Northland.

“I shouldn’t have to make my house into Fort Knox.”

Thieves also made off with a 1973 Oxford caravan nicknamed Pixie from a local woman’s property in Kerikeri earlier this year.

It seems Northland offenders have a penchant for cute caravans, food trucks, tiny homes and cabins.

In August, thieves made off with a 1973 Oxford caravan nicknamed Pixie from a local woman’s property in Kerikeri, who bought the caravan to remember her late dad by.

And in May, the owner of portable building company Space King appealed for help in tracking down one of his rental cabins stolen from a Marsden Point Rd property in Ruakaka.

Victor Smith, who rents the cabins to hard-up Northlanders for emergency housing, also had a portable cabin stolen from Waitangi in 2021.

Police have charged a man in connection to Fox’s missing caravan.

A spokeswoman said police executed a search warrant at an address in Waimio on October 22, the day after it was reported stolen.

A 41-year-old man is scheduled to appear in the Kaikohe District Court on November 12 charged with two counts of receiving property and the unlawful taking of a motor vehicle.

Jenny Ling is a senior journalist at the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering human interest stories, along with roading, lifestyle, business, and animal welfare issues.