The tenants from the highly-publicized Celtic Manor eviction in March are back in Story County after breaking their probations by leaving the state without notifying their probation officers.

Tera Nohrenberg sat talking about what few items she has retrieved since the March eviction from her family’s three-bedroom apartment at Celtic Manor, 1300 Mortensen Rd.

Wearing items recovered since her return to Ames – a pair of jeans, a royal blue fleece pullover and a pin with a picture of her stepdaughter wearing her Ballard cheerleading outfit – Nohrenberg shares her thoughts on the eviction that left her family’s belongings strewn alongside Mortensen Road.

Nohrenberg and husband Bob Bochik were picked up by police in Arkansas and brought back to Story County to serve jail time for breaking their probation agreements. Nohrenberg was placed on probation following a theft charge of writing a bad check. Nohrenberg is now asking for her photo albums and other personal items back from whomever took them.

“I’m not out to bash Cochrane and Associates for the eviction; that was a due and legal process,” Nohrenberg said. “But it would have been much easier for me if I’d have known it just went in a Dumpster. Throwing it in a ditch doesn’t make sense to me.”

Nohrenberg’s husband, Bob Bochik, used to perform maintenance for Ev Cochrane and Associates, property manager of Celtic Manor. Ev Cochrane said he tried to help the family out by offering a garage and a truck to move some of the items.

“I like Bob. Bob worked for us; I thought he was a decent guy,” said Ev Cochrane, of Cochrane and Associates. “I offered to have our workers move Bob’s belongings to a garage. He offered not to take us up on it.”

The Nohrenberg-Bochik family didn’t have much time to react the morning of the eviction, Nohrenberg said. The day the eviction notice was served, they were out of town speaking with family members and asking to borrow money. Since they had been out of town, they didn’t receive the notice of the Tuesday eviction until Monday night, Nohrenberg said.

Bochik talked to Ev Cochrane Tuesday morning around 8 a.m., when Cochrane said he offered to help the family out by lending them a garage. Bochik also visited the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and a Story County judge, but was told they would need to be out of their apartment by 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Bochik returned a little bit before 9 a.m., Nohrenberg said. The deputy knocked on the door and he had the apartment manager and several maintenance people with him, and after negotiations, it was decided they would have until noon.

“The sheriff bent over backwards for the guy,” Cochrane said. “The sheriff gave him three more hours and said `Please move your stuff in the next few hours; otherwise it’s going to be thrown out in the snow bank.'”

“The sheriff was following procedure; when the guy won’t pick up his own belongings and move them out of the apartment, the sheriff has to do it,” Cochrane said.

Cochrane doesn’t understand why the family chose to leave their belongings behind.

Nohrenberg said they had no other choice.

“We had $300 at that point and our decision was to pack up bags with a couple changes of clothes and grab some of the readily accessible personal mementos,” Nohrenberg said. “It was about 11:30, 11:40 [a.m.] or so when all of us took our apartment keys off our key rings and laid them on the counter, made sure the door to the hallway was open and went out and crawled in the car.”

Nohrenberg, Mary Ann and Bob Bochik piled in the car with a few changes of clothes, a few photo albums and two cats, Nohrenberg said. On the way out of town, they stopped at Ballard High School to check Mary Ann out of school properly and clean out her locker.

They headed to Texas, and, a few days later, they continued to Arkansas. Nohrenberg will return to Arkansas Tuesday and wait out the remainder of her husband’s jail time before he is placed back on probation.

“It’s starting to feel like home. We’ve got some pictures hanging on the walls,” Nohrenberg said. “We’ve met some incredibly generous people down there. We’re going to make a go of it; we’re trying really hard.”

Mary Ann Bochik is enrolled in an Arkansas high school and is staying with a friend while Nohrenberg and Bob Bochik are in Iowa.

Even now, Nohrenberg doesn’t think they could have handled the situation differently under the circumstances.

“With the limited amount of space we had and the amount of time we had, I’m not sure there was anything more we can do,” Nohrenberg said.

Nohrenberg was released last week from the Story County Jail, and has spent her days since sifting through the boxes of her possessions that were collected after ISU students and Ames residents picked them over.

“It’s weird going through it – how the little things excite me,” Nohrenberg said. “I found my cat’s brush. I had a leather backpack, it was my favorite backpack. It was [in the boxes]; all the things in it were, of course, gone.”

One place Nohrenberg has received a lot of solace is Bethesda Lutheran Church, 1517 Northwestern Ave., which she has attended since she came to Ames in 1984.

“[The congregation members] really have shown me what having a faith community is about,” Nohrenberg said. “When I’ve told people what happened, they haven’t drawn back when I told them I spent two weeks in jail.”

In fact, the church agreed to act as a collection point for Nohrenberg after she returns to Arkansas to be with her stepdaughter.

“I know I’ll never be able to repay these people – either in good works or monetarily – to the degree they have helped and assisted me. I hope they never even come close to what we’ve gone through in the past three months.”