A hoard of gawkers, national media, Secret Service agents and police officers had finally left the apartment building of Barack Obama's grandmother last week when resident Thomas Stocks noticed that a heavy bird bath, a set of table and chairs and a potted plant had disappeared.

Left in their place at the Punahou Circle Apartments on Beretania Street are a pile of rubble that had once been the stone stand for the bird bath, an empty spot where elderly residents sat every day at the table in the building's open lobby, and the companion to a plant that Stocks bought for Obama's Honolulu vacation in August.

"It stoops to the absolute lowest of the community," said Stocks, a 47-year-old, retired insurance agent. "You can't believe that they would steal everything that wasn't nailed down just as a souvenir."

Stocks just wants everything brought back, no questions asked.

Obama hastily rescheduled his campaign appearances last week to return to his birthplace of Honolulu to see his ailing grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, whom he calls "Toot," in her two-bedroom, 10th-floor apartment where she raised him.

Obama was in town for just over 24 hours while many of the residents of the Punahou Circle Apartments hunkered down in their apartments until Friday night, with posted instructions not to let in strangers.

After all of the activity died down, Stocks noticed that the heavy clamshell bird bath was gone from its stone stand, which normally sits next to the resident manager's apartment in the outdoor lobby.

All that's left are the stones, which are now strewn about.

The clamshell bird bath "was bleached white by the sun and was filled with water," Stocks said. "It was huge. You could pull a disk carrying it down the street."

The old glass table and four companion chairs that normally sat in the middle of the lobby also had disappeared.

"It was used every day by a little old man and his wife who would sit at that table, or used to, and talk story after they got their mail," Stocks said. "I would hope a person would just return it."

Also gone are one of two potted plants that Stocks and the building's resident manager bought last summer for Obama's vacation.

"Who would take a plant?" Stocks asked.

Stocks has lived on the 12th floor of the building for the last decade and has spent the last seven years helping care for the grounds as a hobby.

"I know every leaf, every blade of grass" around the building, Stocks said. So he would certainly notice when a bulky bird bath was gone, he said.

The building's resident manager did not return messages seeking comment.

The bird bath and table and chairs had been fixtures of the building for decades, Stocks said. For decades they sat in the garden in the back of the building until last year, when workers renovated the garden and moved the bird bath and furniture to the front of the building.

The items that disappeared had little monetary worth, but lots of practical and sentimental value for the building's residents, Stocks said.

"Now they're all gone," he said. "Who would do such a thing?"