Adele Robey knew she’d been robbed as soon as she walked into the Anacostia Playhouse on the day after Christmas.

“There was stuff strewn everywhere: Papers, filing cabinets pulled out, everything pulled out. Every computer they could identify taken,” she said as she pointed around her now-clean office. To Robey, the theater’s executive director, the place is like a second home.

Two weeks after the burglary, Robey says she’s still in shock. At first, it was because of the robbery. Now, it’s because of her community’s show of support.

“We’re Going To Just Come Together And Get It Done”

The community theater moved to downtown Anacostia from the H Street Corridor in 2013. It’s a modest operation—its annual budget is in the range of $220,000—but it quickly became a cultural bedrock for the neighborhood. The playhouse hosts everything from concerts by local musicians to magic shows for children. It’s also part of a widening network of neighborhood arts establishments, along with organizations like the Anacostia Arts Center and We Act Radio.

“So many people love this space,” said Nikki Peele, a theater volunteer and author of the blog Congress Heights on the Rise. “And I was like, oh no, we’ve got to do something about this.”

The day she heard about the robbery, Peele put up a GoFundMe crowdfunding page in support of the theater. The goal was to raise $20,000.

The Christmas thieves had taken five computers, a tablet, blank checks and $500 in cash. They’d also gone through the building’s black box theater, box office and the headquarters of Theater Alliance, the playhouse’s resident company. (Luckily, Robey said, the thieves apparently didn’t know much about theater equipment — they left the sound board and lighting equipment intact.)

Donations began appearing on the GoFundMe site almost immediately. Most were small — $5 here, $20 there — but they kept coming. Small businesses in the neighborhood helped spread the word. “We all know things are tight for everybody,” Peele said, “but we’re going to step up and do this for Adele. We’re going to just come together and get it done.”

In less than three days, they got it done — and then some. A total of 454 people donated a combined $22,000.

“We Want To Make Sure We Deserve It”

It’s not the first time the tightly knit community has banded together in support of small businesses. In 2015, Mama’s Kitchen, a restaurant just down the road from the Anacostia Playhouse, was robbed five times in a single year. Neighborhood residents (including Robey) raised more than $4,000 to help the owner pay for a new security system.

“It’s really overwhelming. The thing of it was overwhelming, the attention of it was overwhelming, and the generosity is overwhelming,” Robey said of Peele’s GoFundMe campaign. “We want to make sure we deserve it.”

People supported the playhouse in other ways, too. The theater received a swell of donations directly through their website, and the Round House Theater in Bethesda passed a donation plate through the audience after a recent show in support of the Anacostia Playhouse.

Robey plans to use the money to replace the stolen computers and pay for a better security system. Property crime has gone up in the area around the Playhouse over the past year, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department, and police are still investigating the Christmas robbery.

Peele, for her part, is crossing her fingers that the memory of her neighborhood’s supportive response will outlive that of the crime itself.

“I didn’t want this to be a cautionary tale of why people shouldn’t do things in communities that really need them,” she said. “I hope it turned into a story of what people can do.”