A South Portland couple is offering a $100 reward for the return of a 90-pound pumpkin painstakingly raised over the summer by their two small children only to be stolen from their porch Thursday night.

Lynda Stocks said that 2-year-old Sam and Isabel, who will turn 7 on Sunday, are very upset by the theft. The children, with the help of their father, Peter Stocks, labored all summer to raise the pumpkin in their garden.

The family was planning to carve the hefty pumpkin today and have it be a centerpiece at a Halloween party the family is holding.

They are hoping it will be back in time for the holiday. “It would make our Halloween, that’s for sure,” Stocks said.

A 70-pound pumpkin the children also grew was stolen from their porch at 98 Colchester Drive last week, Stocks said. But she said the family thought their 90-pound behemoth couldn’t be moved because it was so heavy.

“We figured it was safe enough to leave the 90-pounder. I can’t even pick it up,” Stocks said.

Their house is on a quiet back road of a subdivision that gets little traffic. Because it was so heavy, Stocks said they figure that an older teenager or even an adult took the pumpkin. The person also probably had car because the family has seen no signs of a smashed pumpkin in the neighborhood, she said.

She and her husband heard a commotion late at night on Thursday but thought it was the children making noise. When they went to turn off the porch light around midnight, they discovered the pumpkin gone.

It was a bad growing summer for all kind of plants because of weeks of rain. But the two children lovingly cared for their pumpkins, even helping their father build a special tent over them to keep them from getting too wet.

“It was lots of work and now to have their fruition stolen, they’re really in shock. They don’t understand,” the children’s mother said.

The pumpkin had become quite famous at Dyer Elementary School, where Isabel is in the first grade, Stocks said.

The pumpkin was transported to school and it stayed there for about a week as the students measured its girth and learned about pumpkins, Stocks said. “They really had a fun time,” Stocks said.

She said the family is offering a $100 reward for information leading to the return of the pumpkin. Anyone with information should call the family at 899-1232.

“We want it back for Halloween,” Stocks said.

Isabel Stocks, who turns 7 on Sunday, sits atop a 90-pound pumpkin she grew with the help of her father, Peter, and 2-year-old brother, Sam. The pumpkin was stolen Thursday night from the Stocks’ home on Colchester Drive in South Portland. Behind her is a 70-pound pumpkin that was stolen last week. (Courtesy photo)

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