1 of 4 Full Screen Full Screen Autoplay Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Caption Buy This Photo Frank Perez and his daughters cleaned Delaney Park Locomotive 556 on Wednesday, March 22, 2017. Perez said the vandalism angered him and he felt compelled to clean it. (Photo courtesy of Frank Perez) Wait 1 second to continue.

A man and his daughters Wednesday night cleaned a historic locomotive that was vandalized with graffiti earlier this week, according to an Anchorage Parks and Recreation Department official.

Anchorage-born Frank Perez said he spotted the graffiti on his way to work Wednesday. The vandalism angered him and he felt compelled to act. He brought his daughters along to teach them a lesson about community, he said.

"I told them you're never wrong to do the right thing," Perez said in a phone interview Friday night.

"They were volunteers, or good Samaritans, I guess you'd call them," said Maeve Nevins Lavtar, the department's senior park planner. "There is some graffiti left around the rivets, but overall they did a superb job."

Anchorage police arrested and charged 18-year-old Terrence John Keoni Vicens in connection with the vandalism. Vicens stands accused of covering the rear car of the train with a graffiti mural that read "AMEN."

Parks and Recreation officials said Wednesday that they were formulating plans to remove the graffiti on the locomotive, officially known as Delaney Park Locomotive 556, located at the corner of Ninth Avenue and E Street.

Two local companies had offered time and supplies to revert the monument to its former state. At least two other locals had reached out to the city and were willing to help with the cleaning efforts, Nevins Lavtar said.

The park planner said she drove by the train on Wednesday around 5 or 6 p.m. and saw a man cleaning it.

"I thought it was maintenance staff," she said. "I saw the man; I didn't see the kids. I saw him and thought, 'Oh, that's great.' Believe me, if I knew (it was a good Samaritan) I would have been out there … definitely talking to him, and maybe helping him out."

Perez said he used 18 sponges and $24 worth of graffiti remover, products he has used numerous times to remove graffiti from company property during his day job.

The tools are in line with what city workers would have used for a temporary fix, Nevins Lavtar said. She asked the department's maintenance team to go and clean or cover the graffiti temporarily, until temperatures warmed up enough to do more repairs, she said.

That additional work is still planned, though the exact steps are not yet officially decided. Mike Andersen, president of DAMA Industrial LLC, has volunteered crew labor to repaint the locomotive, and the Anchorage Sherwin-Williams paint store has agreed to donate supplies to cover the graffiti, officials said.

The current plan calls for the removal of a polyurethane sealant and several layers of epoxy below the sealant, Nevins Lavtar said.

"They have to resurface it, or repaint it with a couple layers and then they'll put an anti-graffiti coating over the top to seal it back up to original conditions," she said.

The coating meant to protect against future vandalism was not previously on the locomotive – it's not something city officials considered when improving the condition of the train in 2012, when it was deemed a safety hazard.

The city thanks Perez for his efforts, Nevins Lavtar said, but in the future, the department prefers people get in touch with its volunteer coordinator "if someone is going to do work on our property."