It was two days after Lucia Hylen (11) got her first car, just after the start of the school year–the first time she could take it out to lunch with her friends. Just like any other school day, she attended all her classes and went to lunch. This time though, she was the one who got to drive herself. 

On her way to Qdoba, all she was worried about was crashing her new car. But once Hylen returned to the school, she discovered a deep scratch from the driver’s side door to the back door of her Chevrolet Malibu.

“I was just shocked and confused,” Hylen said.

After she discovered the scratch, Hylen immediately texted her parents, who then contacted the school.

Hylen’s mom, Tali Ferris-Hylen was also disappointed at the situation.

“Considering that was the first day at school she had her car and it was in the parking lot for 10 minutes, I was pretty bummed out,” Ferris-Hylen said. 

Hylen and other students have become victims in a string of car keying incidents that occurred in the student parking lot. While the administration could only verify the few vandalisms that were reported to them, photo evidence corroborates student stories who did not file a formal report to the school.

Hylen was given permission to go through security footage of the student parking lot with building sub, Nate Colon to find the person who vandalized her car. However, the cameras did not cover the area of the lot where her car was parked, so she did not receive the resolution she was expecting.

Moving forward, Hylen has changed her parking habits in hopes of preventing any further incidents.

“I park by where the cameras are because i’m not gonna go around accusing people if it happens again,” Hylen said.

Hylen is not the only victim of vandalism in the school parking lot. Maggie Swords’(12) car was keyed last spring of 2024, showing that car defacement has been a problem for longer than this school year.

At the time, Swords was sharing her car with her brother, so they were both impacted by the keying.

After finding shapes and circles etched into her Ford Edge, she too contacted her parents.

“My parents were really mad and called the school, and they told me to go look at the cameras in the parking lot,” Swords said.

Similarly to Hylen, she did not find what she was looking for.

“They just looked at the cameras. And they’re like, sorry, we can’t help you,” Swords said. “And then they let me park in the teacher’s lot for the last week of school.”

Hylen and Swords were not the only ones who have been impacted. For Elsa Elhenicky (12), it was a regular Friday after school. She walked to the student lot where her car was parked like she did every day, and like the others, she discovered that someone had vandalized her BMW X5.

Under her trunk, someone had dug their key almost from end to end on the car.

Elhenicky chose not to report the incident to the school because she knew the cameras were unreliable, and didn’t see any point in prolonging the situation.

“I think more cameras would help eliminate a lot of problems,” Elhenicky said.

According to Christian Palasty, the Director of Technology and Media Services, that change is on the way. 

“There are plans to upgrade all of the ELHS cameras next summer,” Palasty said. “So, we are already working to identify high-definition cameras with AI functionality that can do everything from weapon detection, license plate recognition, individual tracking, etc.”

The upgrades are a part of the bond that was approved by voters in May of 2024 and plan to improve security all around the school.

Director of Health and Safety Matthew Morales said that these cameras should help enhance several aspects of student safety, but that the location of the security items, including cameras, has not been determined yet.

Palasty also said there are currently less than 10 cameras that cover the student lot that were initially installed 20 years ago and upgraded in 2012-2013. 

But for Hylen, Elhenicky, Swords and many other students, they weren’t any help.

Associate Principal Jeffrery Lampi encourages students to continue to lock their doors and keep personal belongings safe, as cameras are not foolproof solutions, and hopes the bond will increase overall safety and security around the campus.