PORLAND - Two large scultptures stolen from the estate of a Portland philanthropist were cut up and sold for scrap metal, the authorities said.

The works were valued in the tens of thousands of dollars.

"The pieces of art are irreplaceable, one of a kind ... and they hacked them into little pieces," said Dorie Vollum, daughter-in-law of the art patron Jean Vollum.

Police on Thursday arrested Kathryn M. Loundree, 36, of Portland and her boyfriend, Rodney Remick, 33. The woman had been hired to protect the property as an employee of a Portland-based security company.

Parts of the sculptures were recovered at a trailer Loundree shared with Remick, said Deputy Travis Gullberg, spokesman for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. Gullberg said sheriff's detectives and the Portland Police Bureau served a search warrant Thursday.

Loundree and Remick are suspected of selling the metal to pay for drugs, Gullberg said. Both were booked into the Justice Center Jail on suspicion of aggravated theft.

"Ironically, Loundree stood in my kitchen the night we discovered they had been stolen," Vollum said. "She sympathized with us."

The sculptures taken last month were an untitled welded metal piece made in 1970 by Portland artist Tom Hardy and a 1967 cast bronze titled "Mother and Child" by the late Frederic Littman.

Officials said the case broke after a worker at a Portland metal recycler became suspicious when he noticed what appeared to be a hand in a bucket of scrap. Another metals recycler also cooperated with the investigation.

"They are both destroyed," Gullberg said of the sculptures. "They were cutting them up and selling them by the bucket, probably getting about a dollar a pound."

Jean Vollum, who died in June, was one of the city's most significant philanthropists of the past three decades and also an art patron who championed many leading artists.