COVINA  (AP) — Josh Roffeis was about to leave for work Wednesday morning when he discovered his green Honda filled with most of the family’s Christmas presents had been stolen.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports that the gifts, which had been hidden away to avoid curious kids spoiling the surprise, were now gone.

“We were just in shock,” Roffeis said. “Obviously you don’t expect to have a vehicle stolen any time of the year. But for it to happen on Christmas Eve, we didn’t really know what we were going to do.”

Josh and his wife, Karissa, planned to salvage the holiday by placing what presents were left under the tree, and eventually replacing what they could for their four kids: 10-year-old Anthony, 8-year-old Marilyn, 4-year-old Paige and 7-week-old Dominik.

But then, at 10:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Josh Roffeis got a phone call from the Covina police officer who had taken his report that morning. When he walked outside he saw roughly half-a-dozen Covina police officers and two Los Angeles County fire officials walking toward him.

“I said, ‘Uh-oh, am I in trouble?’ “ Roffeis recounted.

No, they’d come bearing gifts: toys, including bicycles, for the kids. And when they learned Anthony was 10, they went back for more age-appropriate presents.

It turns out that the Covina officer who’d taken the report had been touched by their Christmas predicament and spread the word.

“It was amazing. We were just stunned, and my wife was in tears,” Roffeis said. “They lifted a lot of weight off my wife’s shoulders by doing what they did.”