A devastated mum her homemade Coca-Cola truck stolen from her Christmas display by Grinches wearing masks.
But her festive spirit soon returned after an anonymous Good Samaritan donated a new one.
In a bid to win the title of the UK’s biggest Christmas lights display, and raise cash for a children’s cancer charity, Zoe Murphy splashed almost £1,000 building the Coca-Cola truck with her bare hands.
The 40-year-old has spent almost three years swapping Christmas decorations with people across the globe, and on November 27 set up her annual decorations on her mum’s front garden.
The dazzling light show in Gillingham, Kent, included the handmade truck gifted to Zoe's three-year-old son.
But less than two weeks after she set up the decorations - on the day of her mum's birthday - masked raiders ran off with the cab of the truck.
On December 8, Zoe was out for dinner “just a couple of roads away” to celebrate with her mother for around two hours, and came back to find part of her prized truck was gone.
The theft reduced her mum to tears, and Zoe said even now her mum is always looking out of the window wondering if the crooks are going to return to steal more.
She is also too scared to go outside to chat to neighbours over the light show like she used to, Zoe added.
CCTV footage captured two vehicles driving down the road multiple times before at 7.45pm, as one figure ran out and tried to grab the Coca-Cola van.
Because the wood of the truck is heavy the thief was not able to pick it up - it took four people to set it up in its original place.
Once the thieves realised they would not be able to make off with it the gang kicked the truck to the side and ripped the cab out from beneath it.
After the police were called Zoe took to the local Facebook group to hunt for security footage and discovered others also had their belongings stolen from their gardens.
Despite having got no further with catching the villains, the family got some Christmas cheer when a white van was generously donated as a replacement.
By the evening, the family believe they will have the Coca-Cola van back up and glowing, after they have spray painted the new cab red.
Zoe said: “My mum is a nervous wreck, always looking out the window thinking someone's going to come and steal more.
“Every night she normally goes and chats to everyone that goes past and to the neighbours, and I asked her if she’d been doing that recently and she said no, she hasn’t.
"It was my mum's birthday and we literally popped out to treat her to dinner, we were only gone for about two hours and it happened then.
"We've got them on camera, two cars went up and down the road and they stopped outside a neighbour's house – two of them got out, opened the back of their van and went up to the Coca-Cola truck and tried shaking it."
Currently the mum is using the decorations to raise money for child cancer charity My Shining Star.
She added: "We reached £500 yesterday in the charity pot and we were sitting there celebrating.
"I was buzzing because that's a lot more than we raised last year by this point, it's only been nine days, but then we came home and my mum just burst out crying.
"When we put the truck out there we sat my son down and told him we were raising money for poorly children, we explained to him what we were doing and he understood and even told everyone at school that his toys were in the display so all the kids could come and have a look.
"You just don't expect it. Last night I was in shock and I was still awake at 3am because I was so angry.
"You just start to think to yourself why do we go out of our way to plan it all year? My mum spends hours out there chatting to everyone looking at the displays.
"It all comes out of our own pocket to cheer everyone up and everyone loves it and you just think 'why do I bother?'.
"But then you remember that you're trying to do it for a good cause, but it's just disheartening.
"We're not going to let it stop us but it's just sad, we're trying to give to people who are not so lucky in life - and people do that [steal], it's just horrible.
"All that money we've put into making everything and making it nice to raise money for kids, people are just so heartless."
But the mum is excited to receive the new truck today.
She added: “Someone has anonymously messaged us, and said they have a truck exactly the same as the one that was stolen, but it’s white - would we want it to be donated?
“My said no at first because she was worried what if it gets stolen again, she wouldn’t want to have someone else’s property getting taken.
“But we spoke to them and they said whatever happens, happens.
“They’re dropping it off this afternoon - we’ve gone and brought some red spray paint, so we’ll spray the new cab red and hopefully it will all be back up by the end of the afternoon."
