Classic Eventing Nation

You clearly weren't Tebowing hard enough, Erika! Photo courtesy of Erika Adams.

For Erika Adams, whose trailer was stolen from Tryon International Equestrian Center a little more than a week ago, the first stage of grief was denial.

Erika is a familiar face in Area III; her Road Less Traveled Eventing Team is based at Yellow Wood Farm in Lenoir City, Tenn., about a three-hour haul from Tryon. She was at the site of the upcoming AECs getting her green eventer Iffy some show jumping mileage and at first all seemed well: she got in, had a school and a good look around the by-all-accounts spectacular new facility, and tucked Iffy in for the night.

But when she pulled into the trailer parking lot at around 6:45 the next morning to grab a bale of hay and her gear from her four-horse Sundowner … it wasn’t there.

Erika was accompanied by her friend Val Gibbons, who shares Erika’s peculiar sense of humor, and at first they assumed that it was some kind of joke. Maybe a clueless horse show boyfriend had hitched up the wrong trailer and, upon realization, re-parked it in a different spot. Or maybe they really were just losing their minds and were mistaken about where they’d parked it themselves. They drove around the lot a few times, waiting for the morning coffee to kick in and the trailer to present itself.

“We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Erika recalls. “Where is it? It’s not really gone. We’re getting senile. Where did we put it?”

The show had competitors park their trailers in a new two-tiered parking lot with a separate entrance from the barns, and Erika says she’d had a bad feeling leaving it there the night before. Not because it ever crossed her mind that it might get stolen — who ever thinks about that? — but because the lot had a grade to it and she was worried it might roll down the hill. Being the careful, thinks-of-everything graduate “A” Pony Clubber she is, Erika piled rocks in front of the wheels in addition to her chocks as an extra barrier.

It wasn’t until she spotted her chocks and the rocks moved to the side that reality hit. It was really gone.

“We drove to the barn in shocky silence,” Erika says. “We fed Iffy, and after we fed If I turned to Val and said, ‘I think my trailer was stolen.’ And she said, ‘You know, I think you’re right.'”

Having your trailer is stolen is bad enough, but for many packrat eventers (guilty as charged!) our trailer tack rooms double as storage for all our gear. Fortunately, Erika’s trainer Harrison C. Ford had offered to let Erika throw her tack in his tack stall the night before, but her trailer was still filled with thousands of dollars worth of clothes and equipment. The inventory: her shadbelly, top hat, cross-country vest, skull cap, whirlpool boots, ice boots, cross-country boots, a drawer full of bits, and a lifetime’s accumulation of eventing “stuff.”

Also, Erika’s entire horse show wardrobe. “It just so happened that I’d emptied out my closet and brought ALL my show clothes,” Erika says. “I was going to a hunter show and I didn’t know what I’d need to wear — you hear ‘bring your pearls’ and ‘wear only tan pants,’ I’m an eventer, I don’t know — so I literally brought EVERYTHING.”

Erika and Val went to the show office; the police came and filed a report. With nothing else to do but wait, Erika made a valiant attempt to go through with the morning classes she’d signed up for. The show must go on!

“I was wrecked,” Erika says. “I had 17 time faults. I managed to jump every jump in order and he never stopped; I just kept getting stuck in corners with no idea where I was going. I could hear Harrison in the background shouting ‘turn! turn! turn!’ I wish I had it on video. I’m sure it was hilarious.”

(And yes, inquiring minds, she WAS wearing pants — luckily she’d stuffed a couple pairs in her bag.)

“It was an insane morning,” Erika says. “Between 6:45 and 10:30 a.m. I had discovered that my trailer was gone, dealt with security, the cops came out, I walked my course, did two classes and had multiple breakdowns. I’m glad it happened that way, though. If there had been more time it would have been more traumatic. I just had to keep rolling.”

The question Erika kept asking herself: of all the nice trailers in that lot (it was a fancy hunter/jumper show, after all), why would someone take hers? The 1999 four-horse slant load was no spring chicken, one fender that had been busted up in a blowout was held together with twine and there were stickers all over the back. If you’re going to steal a trailer, at least steal one with swanky living quarters, geez.

With so many identifying markers and considering the expense of welding the aluminum fender back together, Erika assumes the trailer wasn’t stolen for resale but to be stripped for parts: “I don’t have much hope of it resurfacing. Someone came in with intent and an order to fill — Sundowner, four-horse, slant load — and I’ll never see it again.”

Erika says the upper-tier lot is visible from the interstate and close to the interstate entrance ramp. Making it even more tempting to potential thieves, it was set well apart from the show grounds with a separate entrance, unguarded, unfenced, ungated and poorly lit. After Erika reported her trailer stolen, show security stepped up to the plate to make sure the lot of was secure, but she’s bummed that her trailer had to be the sacrificial lamb.

It will be weeks before Erika has any answers about whether she’ll be able to recoup anything from insurance — she had it covered but not for replacement — but even if she does, her trailer was worth more to her than its value on paper reflects and will be difficult to replace: “I kid about it being held together with duct tape and baling twine but it was in really good shape and was doing its job.”

If Erika gets choked up when she’s telling the story now, it’s less about her stolen trailer and more about the response she’s gotten from the community. First things first, Erika’s trainer Harrison referred her to local tack store The Farm House, which immediately took her under its wing, and Ariat International pitched in to replace her show jacket, breeches and show shirt for free.

“I walked in with tears in my eyes — ‘I need some clothes’ — and they were awesome and amazing. They gave me a hug, ran to the back, got a bottle of wine and shoved me in a dressing room: ‘Try on these clothes.’ I felt like a princess, and the discounts they gave me … I’m sure they paid for half of what I’m wearing.”

Erika gives Val a lot of credit for keeping her laughing throughout the whole ordeal. One of Iffy’s owners, who was making the three-ish hour drive to Tryon to watch anyway, brought a trailer up to get the horse home. And since then, Erika says, she’s been shocked by how many people have been canvassing classified ads on her behalf and sending her links to anything that looks like it could potentially be hers.

Trailer description: 1999 Sundowner four-horse slant load, white with black and grey stripes on the side, damaged left fender, Tennessee license plate T382699. Photo courtesy of Erika Adams.

Her friends also set up a Go Fund Me campaign, “Helping Erika Replace Her Trailer,” which has already raised upwards of $5,000.

“It’s really been overwhelming, all the people who have been stepping up to help me, a virtual stranger,” Erika says. “$5,000 is … a lot. And I mean, this is a first world problem. I’ve got food on my plate, and there are starving kids in Africa. But I’m touched by it.”

Erika’s humility notwithstanding, we encourage anyone who is able to donate to her fund. Helping a sister out, especially one who’s been a cornerstone of the community for as long as Erika has been, is what eventers do best. You can visit her Go Fund Me campaign here.

Go Eventing.