The letter "C" which was stolen from a sign in Clemson was returned home on Monday morning.

The Tiger Sports Shop on College Avenue downtown usually boasts two sets of letters spelling out "Clemson" above an old marquee.

Sometime between Monday and Thursday last week, one of the C's from "Clemson" went missing. The store's owner, Julie Ibrahim, noticed the missing letter Friday morning, general manager Patti Nichols said.

On Monday, May 20, Nichols found the letter sitting back on top of the sign. The person responsible for the removal and return has not been identified.

Nichols has worked at the store for 35 years and said this is the first time a letter has been stolen during her tenure.

"In the great scheme of things, no one got murdered, but for us it is iconic, like Howard's Rock," Nichols said before it was returned.

On Friday, the Clemson City Police Department reported the missing letter on Facebook in a post that had been shared 637 times as of Saturday morning.

"Do you realize the hornets nest you just stirred with your shenanigans?" the department wrote in addressing the perpetrator.

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Nichols said the store appreciated the humor in the post and updated its marquee with similar language.

"Did you 'C' the shenanigans," it now reads. "We're just Lemsoning along."

The store was already preparing to replace the letter before it was returned on Monday. Sherman Swofford, who makes signs for Skyvision Signs in Spartanburg, and Eric Barnhill, an aircraft mechanic, are friends of Ibrahim and were called in to assist.

Barnhill took down the second C on the building to help make a duplicate, which Swofford estimated would have taken 2.5 hours to produce. When Barnhill took down the letter, he warned a nearby police officer so he would not be considered a suspect in the sign caper.

With the original letter returned, Barnhill and Swofford planned to clean both C's up before reinstalling them on Monday.

The store took over the historic Clemson Theatre in 1984.

The theater opened in 1948, and a page of advertisements in The Greenville News that year wished the new business well.

"It is not just a C; it is part of Clemson's history and heritage," Nichols said of the sign.

The Clemson City Police Department has not released any information on a suspect and has asked anyone with information on the stolen letter to contact the department.