600 Padres Bobbleheads Mysteriously Left Near Local Residents' Doorstep

Several roommates were miffed when 600 bobbleheads bearing the face of a former Padres player mysteriously turned up near their doorstep in University City, San Diego.

Now they're resorting to handing them out as party favors.

The woman who answered the phone at the San Diego Police Department told Philip Jia it was the strangest call she’d ever received.

Jia and a handful of his young 20-something roommates in University City asked if an officer could come out and take a look at the items someone dumped in the middle of their condo complex street.

Hundreds of Padres bobbleheads littered the pavement and they all had the same face.

“I’m now a huge Chris Denorfia fan,” said Philip Jia, who along with his roomates had never heard of the former Padres player now sitting in more boxes than they could carry.

And so began the great bobblehead mystery of 2015.

“We opened them up expecting to find something a little more nefarious,” Jia said, referring to when they first opened the bobblehead boxes.

“We thought it was from a drug cartel or something,” echoed roommate Jalena Lau. “But when we went through them, they were just regular bobbleheads."

The police department sent an officer who took a report, but advised the group to simply help out their HOA and clean the mess up.

They loaded about half the Denorfia bobbleheads into their apartment, decorating the bedroom of a roommate who wasn’t home and went to bed.

They left the rest in the street and by morning they were gone, presumably taken by neighbors.

The roommates gave them away to co-workers, friends, and family members, but the bobbling Denorfias still hold a hefty presence inside their home.

A huge stack lines the front entry and another pile sits under the inside basketball hoop.

“Actually, we had a huge Halloween party and a lot of our friends came over and it was kind of a like a present we gave out to everyone,” said Lau.

The roommates never heard back from police, so if the Denorfias were stolen or some kind of contraband, it wasn’t reported.

The real Chris Denorfia was traded from the Padres back in July of 2014 and now plays for the Cubs.

The roommates, who’ve considered flooding the Ebay market where some of the same figurines are listed for $20, say the Denorfia Bobblehad demand apparently just isn’t what it used to be.

Contact Us