A group of Otumoetai College students has been left with a real sour taste to their fundraising efforts after a thief snatched a container of their hard-earned cash last Sunday afternoon.

The Year 9-11 students had put in long hours and hard yards raising funds for their robotics club with a sausage sizzle outside Mitre 10 Gate Pa last weekend.

Otumoetai College robotics students Aleks Matic, Aria Smart, John Austin, Josh Copeman, P K Wadsworth, Elliot Watson, Amelie Bourgeois and Adelle Bailey. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

After an arduous six hours selling sausages to the hungry public, parent helper Emma Copeman says the students were packing up and heading home with a profit in their pocket.

That's when she witnessed a young man run up and steal the students' ice cream containers – along with all of their heard-earned money – right out from under their noses.

'Right at the end, as we were packing up, a guy who had been watching the stall earlier ran up really quickly and took the ice cream containers with the money and ran away.”

Emma says the kids are obviously gutted their money – about $250 – was taken. '[All of the children] are a bit shell-shocked, they had put a lot into it.”

Emma and another parent managed to recover some of the change that was dropped, but the perpetrator got away with a large chunk of the profits.

'The guy stuffed a lot of the notes down his top and dropped the container with the change, so he got away with what we think is about $250.

'The kids put in all the work in and then someone just sat there watching and waiting for the right opportunity to take the money and do a runner.”

Emma filed an official report with the Police, and says Mitre 10 is aware of what happened.

'Mitre 10 is going to let fundraisers know for the future.” Hopefully to stop this sort of thing happening again.

And after all that, Emma says the group will probably fundraise again – but they'll take more precautions and it won't be the same.

'We will fundraise again, but does leave a real sour taste.”

But not all of humanity failed the kids that day, says Emma. 'This gorgeous lady went into Mitre 10 and came back with $20 and said: 'Give that to the children, they've worked really hard'.”