Dancing with the Stars pros Mark Ballas and Derek Hough paid a high price for being charitable — they got robbed.
The duo were in Roseville, Minn., Sunday to perform with their band, Almost Amy, at a cancer charity later that night when their rented passenger van was robbed in the parking lot of an Outback Steakhouse eatery.
“It happened at about 4 in the afternoon,” Almost Amy’s manager Daniel Catullo tells PEOPLE. “It was all of their personal belongings — iPods, laptop computers, cameras, passports, wallets.”
The band made a plea on their MySpace page early this morning, offering a $5,000 reward for the return of their personal items.
Ballas and Hough were traveling in the van with three of their band mates. A second van carrying their guitars and performing gear was untouched. The group decided to stop for a late lunch before performing at PapaPalooza, a cancer charity event held at the Deer Creek Speedway near Minneapolis.
“It was a nice area, a nice part of town,” says Catullo, noting that Ballas’s Dancing partner, Kristi Yamaguchi, and her husband, NHL star Bret Hedican, joined them for the late lunch. “It was definitely a pro job. The locks were drilled out and the van was cleaned out of all of its contents.”
“They don’t care about prosecuting anybody, they just would like their personal belongings back,” Catullo says. “Whoever did this, they can email the band’s website and drop the items somewhere and we’ll pick them up, no questions asked. We don’t care about the iPods or other items that can be replaced. It’s the personal items and the laptops they would really like back.” – Monica Rizzo
Starbux/WENN; Richie/jpi
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