In the spirit of Portland’s long-standing ‘Valentine’s Day Bandit,’ businesses and residents in downtown Portland carried on the tradition by adorning windows and walls with red hearts for Valentine’s Day.
For decades, groups of volunteers would go out overnight and attach the universal symbol of love to various buildings throughout the city and its environs. Portlanders would rise on Valentine’s Day to find the red hearts all over downtown and displayed in hard-to-reach places like church steeples and Fort Gorges in Portland Harbor.
Last year, the family of Kevin Fahrman identified him as the Valentine’s Day Bandit after he died in April 2023 at age 67, partially lifting the veil off a long-running local mystery.
Fahrman didn’t start the tradition, but he joined the effort in 1979 and in recent years, had helped organize the volunteer groups that went out to decorate the city.
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