Jeff Schweers

Democrat correspondent

Yoga Man is missing.

And Amy Reiter wants him back. No questions asked.

He’s all she’s got of her mother. So says the sign in her front yard on Spottswood Drive.

“I did that because it was probably taken by someone in the area, some stupid teenagers,” Reiter said.

For awhile, the heavy, 5-foot long carved slab of man lay horizontally on a wooden stump. It disappeared while Reiter and her fiance and their children were on vacation on Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island.

“Soon as we pulled into the driveway, I saw it was gone.”

It must have taken two people to carry it, said Reiter, co-owner of the Sei Bella salon in Midtown.

The thieves left the stump behind.

The sculpture was made by local chainsaw artist John Birch for her mother, Sharon Reiter, in 1991. It sat outside her mother’s house on East Georgia Street near Leon High where she taught yoga for years.

Chainsaw artist John Birch makes the ordinary extraordinary

A new kind of library branch: Artist transforms rotted oak

“She was a kooky lady,” Reiter said. “My mom lived life to the fullest. She had a big personality. She had these parties and her kitchen band, where she would pull out all the pots and pans and jam.”

Sharon Reiter died in 2009. Amy and her siblings decided they had to keep the sculpture.

It stayed with Reiter. She was the only one who lived in Tallahassee.

“Everywhere I’ve moved since then, it’s stayed with me. It was the only thing I kept because she loved it so much.”

The sculpture had been taken once before, in the 1990s, by a group of Leon High students on an annual scavenger hunt. They got as far as Lafayette Park before dumping it.

The sculpture reminds her 14-year-old son of his Grandma. Her fiance’s son senses how much its disappearance upsets Reiter. He keeps looking out the window, waiting for Yoga Man to return.

Her fiance said Yoga Man is probably in someone’s yard, dressed up like in the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

Reiter just wants him back. No questions asked.

“I’m going to bring it inside and turn it into a table.”

Contact Jeff Schweers at js.schweers@gmail.com.

If anyone knows the whereabouts of Yoga Man, please contact Amy Reiter at Sei Bella, 850-212-8582.