Stolen glass, shattered life

Paul Pickel, who owns a stained-glass studio in Vero Beach, Fla., says he had an inkling that one of his creations would be stolen one day.

He never expected it to happen in Philadelphia.

But on the night of Oct. 22, Pickel's 2004 Ford F150 Econoline with Florida plates was stolen from a motel parking lot near the Philadelphia International Airport.

Inside the van was an 8-by -12-foot stained-glass rendering of the Italian saint Padre Pio, which Pickel valued at $100,000 and said took more than a year to create.

"We had thought in the past, somebody would break into it and take some tools, but never to take the whole van with all our material in it," Pickel said Monday in a telephone interview.

The stained-glass mosaic was commissioned by St. Raymond's Cemetery, in the Bronx, where it was supposed to be delivered, Pickel said. Two of his employees were scheduled to make a pit stop in Philly to pick up the project's foreman at the airport, he said.

But when they came out from their room at the Microtel, on Tinicum Boulevard, the next morning, they found "no truck, no product, no anything," Pickel said. "It's a tremendous blow to all of us."

The studio is working with its insurance company to determine what's covered for both the truck and the stained glass. A total loss could mean that the studio will go under after more than 60 years, Pickel said.

"It's a strong possibility," his daughter Lisa Pickel said in an interview from her home in San Diego. "It would be a very difficult project to recover from, if we lose the whole thing."

Lisa Pickel said that the Padre Pio piece was "easily 20 to 30 percent" of her father's business for the year, possibly more.

"It's the only job he's had," Lisa Pickel said of her father. "He's worked his entire life for the studio. I think he's sort of in shock that this happened to him, because it's so unexpected."

Officer Christine O'Brien, a Philadelphia police spokeswoman, said that officers at the scene submitted only a stolen-vehicle report, omitting the stained-glass piece in the back of the truck.

O'Brien said that the case had been forwarded to Southwest Detectives and remained under investigation.

Calls from the Daily News to the motel and to the cemetery - where the famed jazz singer Billie Holiday is buried - were not returned.