Senior ‘beach week’ on the Outer Banks is out of control, civic leaders say. So one community is fighting back.

Stolen signs, trashed vacation homes, doors pulled off frames, indoor furniture dragged to the beach, drunken teens urinating on lawns, mobs of kids blocking residential streets and refusing to move for cars. Some of this bad behavior made possible by enabling parents and adults.

Last year’s “beach week” for high school seniors left a northern Outer Banks village reeling – and vowing it won’t happen again this year.

The Corolla Civic Association hosted a meeting with law enforcement, property managers and vacation rental property managers this fall to review the problems caused by thousands of high school students descending on the community from early-to-mid June.

“The goal was to develop strategies and tactics to inhibit the over the top ‘22 Beach Week shenanigans and confrontations during the upcoming 2023″ beach week, the association said in a news release.

The Outer Banks has seen record visitors over the past two years, with nearly 100 percent occupancy for the 2022 summer season in Currituck County’s beach towns.

“The community strongly felt that the escalating number of Beach Week mobs of kids engaging in atrocious, intolerable behavior is jeopardizing [Corolla’s] hard-earned reputation as a family-oriented vacation destination,” the release said.

Last year, “in an effort to contain the hooliganism,” state alcohol enforcement agents and deputies made 116 arrests over a two-day period in June, including 66 charges for underage drinking, 32 fake identification charges, 23 drug-related offenses and two businesses receiving ABC violations, the Currituck County Sheriff’s Office said.

Brook Sparks, owner and property manager at Coast Realty, says she’s been in the business a long time, and beach week has been an issue for years, just not always in Corolla. Eight or so years ago, it was Nags Head, with hoards of spring breakers and no shortage of cash.

“That’s the first bottle of Cristal I ever saw,” Sparks said. “Just floating in the bathtub.”

Dare County and Nags Head law-enforcement teamed up to make spring break unpleasant for revelers in following years. But young students celebrating life’s milestones have now discovered the Currituck Outer Banks.

The last two years, the village has seen thousands of high school seniors descend for beach week, which follows graduations the last three weeks of June.

Sparks says property managers are working with each other and law enforcement to quickly catch and stop bad behavior, sometimes even before the contracts are signed.

“We now run their names through a database,” Sparks said. “Sometimes we’ll call and say, you can cancel now without any type of fees or damages. If I evict you, you get none of your money back.”

Once the hoards arrive, property managers are “doing drive-bys and spot checks” for each other to make sure vacationers aren’t getting out of hand.

There’s even “Operation Filter,” where maintenance arrives to perform “mandatory” air filter checks, during the week, Sparks said.

This year, Sparks said “we’re pulling out the stops.” There will be extra security, double last year’s numbers of law-enforcement and zero tolerance for illegal activity or lease violations.

“They’re taking people to jail,” Sparks said. “These kids need to think, they’re making decisions that could affect the rest of their lives.”

Many owners have stopped renting during the last three weeks of June because of the young crowds. “For them, the risk is just not worth it,” Sparks said.

There are hard rules at almost all Outer Banks rental agencies that vacationers must be family groups and the renter older than 25. But that hasn’t stopped beach week rentals.

“A disturbing trend is the increasing disregard that many parents/chaperones have for the law and obligations under rental leases, apparently wanting to be the ‘cool’ parents,” the civic association release said.

Currituck officials found parents and other adults renting properties online for groups of teenagers, and never showing up. A high school newspaper in Northern Virginia even had a story on how to prepare for beach week, including getting “a parent or older sibling” to sign the rental agreements.

“We saw kids roll up with the moms, unload their stuff, including cases of beer and hard cider, and the moms just leave,” said Corolla Civic Association President Barbara Marzetti. “There had to be 14 or 16 kids.”

This year, she said, deputies and property managers will concentrate on “wayward chaperones” with criminal charges and evictions for not being present, over-occupancy and property damage. Sparks said some agencies are performing background checks on the main renters before any contracts are signed.

Marzetti said owners and property managers are urged to go to the county magistrate to accelerate vacation rental evictions, with deputies evicting immediately upon receiving a court order.

The association is also drafting a letter to high school principals, superintendents, school boards and private schools in locations that have been the largest source of beach week high school graduates, mainly in Northern Virginia and the D.C. area.

“The key message is that Corolla is a great place for families to visit and a terrible place for wild, out of control partying, that leads to confrontations with other residents and visitors, who then become fearful for their safety,” the association release said. “The hope is that this information will be shared with students and parents so that there is a clear understanding that ‘gone wild’ behavior will not be tolerated here.”

Kari Pugh, kari.pugh@virginiamedia.com