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Reported stolen over the weekend, St. Louis ‘tiny home’ discovered intact

HOUSE SPRINGS, Mo. — The mystery of the missing tiny home has been solved. Jefferson County, Missouri Sheriff Dave Marshak told KTVI News that a 12-foot t...
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HOUSE SPRINGS, Mo. -- The mystery of the missing tiny home has been solved.

Jefferson County, Missouri Sheriff Dave Marshak told KTVI News that a 12-foot tall home stolen from a St. Louis woman over the weekend was located in Jefferson County Wednesday morning.

The home's owner, Meghan Panu, was featured over the weekend after reporting the home stolen. She had been building the home for nearly two years as part of a senior thesis in environmental studies at Webster University, and found it's theft "devastating."

Panu has been documenting the home's construction on social media.

During the construction phase, she kept the home in Ballwin, Webster Groves, later moving it to south St. Louis.

"We were working eight-hour days, several days out of the week," she told KTVI. "So, I would go from my classes at Webster, and I would drive out to Ballwin and work on the house, and I loved that. I loved the hustle of that."

Panu had plans to move the tiny house again this week to an intentional living community which would showcase shipping container homes, Earthbag homes, and other tiny homes. She intended to move into the tiny house in the spring.

Panu estimates she invested $20,000 dollars into her tiny home -- $1,500 of which she received from the public through a GoFundMe campaign.

But the money was not the part that upset her most.

"There's such little regard for the effort, and the time, and the love that I've put into this, and I think that's what's the most frustrating to me -- that it's not just a material possession," she told KTVI after the theft. "It's not just a car. It's a place where I was going to sort of build roots and grow in my community."

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