Bad news for one of my custom cabinentmakers

[drcollie]

John Buchanan, my best custom cabinetmaker and whose work is prominently displayed here in the forum, just informed me his daughter has been kidnapped in Somali and handed over to pirates. So we will NOT be doing any custom work or quotes until this is resolved, he's spending most all his time working with the State Department, the FBI and the Danish organization that employs here. Story is here:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/27/world/...a-aid-workers/

Tough break for a good man who has had more than his share of hard times lately.

[drcollie]

I talked to John for 20 minutes this evening. He told me his son-in-law called from Nairobi on Tuesday morning about 10 a.m (eastern time) to tell him what had happened. Her boss was the other person kidnapped, and it was a set-up by his Somali staff. She had declined to go to that part of Somalia four times in the past two months but her boss finally persuaded her to make the trip, and as soon as she was off the airplane the two of them were taken, then sold to the pirate group who is now finding it too risky to make grabs of ships at sea. They have their own security team on the Nairobi border (made up of natives with AK-47's) and her security guys want to form a militia then go get her back. That's not going to work, as we all know. Would just be a lot of dead bodies around if that occurred.

The FBI was at John's house for five hours yesterday. There are certain things they said he can't tell me and I respect that, and a few things he did tell me that I thought best not be made public. He's pretty stressed about things right now and I can't say that I blame him.

[organic_smallhome]

Speechless. You never expect this sort of thing to hit so close to home.

[juliatevis]

My thoughts and prayers go out to John and his family. This is one thing you never believe will happen to the sweet bundle you bring home from the hospital.

[caglar]

I work for an international organization and one of my colleague's son was kidnapped right outside of his school in Nigeria. They safely got him back after four days of negotiations and paying the ransom. (My organization purchases insurance for this kind of stuff and they paid) but you can only imagine what they went through. The sad part is that it happens to people who are there to help Africa. Of course, after this incident, they had a hard time finding anybody to go there and we had to drop projects worths tens of millions.. I only hope and pray this gets resolved quickly without any harm to his daughter and her boss...

[harland]

I guess a few of those Navy SEALs need to take a trip back to the Horn of Africa and remind the pirates why they shouldn't kidnap people...

[motifone]

That's horrible. Hope for the best !

[Monique]

What a nightmare! One of my daughters had a problem in Spain once. It pales in comparison to this. I almost lost my mind before we got her back home.

My heart goes out to John and his family and my prayers are with them.

[juliepooch]

This is so very sad. Is there anything we can do for John and his family?

[lishaana]

How terrible! I was just about to email you about the status of our custom dining table. Our thoughts and prayers are with John and his family...