Greyhawk's Meanderings

1 - I'm betting your second friend's culprit was a neighbor. The kid who broke into my folks' place (the one Slurpy chased off) was renting the upstairs room of the house next door. He watched my folks leave, then went over and kicked the door in. Also in broad daylight.

A reason I too will always own a dog.

We lucked out the other day. We didn't notice the garage didn't close all the way, and we were gone for several hours. Fortunately nothing was missing. Yes, we live in a small, rural town where people leave their doors unlocked 24/7, but so do my parents. It just takes one idiot to screw it all up.

2 - These sorts of events are just horrible. My parents were broken in to - WHILE THEY WERE HOME - right after Hurricane Wilma while everyone was still without power (and therefore without alarm systems, too). And their (little) generator marked them as a target. My parents both thought in the 10 minutes or so that those bastards were in their home that neither one of them would see the night out alive. And yes, those lousy excuses for human beings got utterly irreplaceable items - my grandfather's rolex, both parents' wedding rings - along with lots of overall cash value. But my parents are both still alive, thank G-d. And trying to turn this into a positive, we try to look at each day we do have as a reason to be thankful.

3 - Yeah, it is kinda sad that we end up not knowing our neighbors like the old small town days. Privacy comes at a price I guess. So it just makes sense to take a little time and theft-proof the house a little better... just in case.

4 - Our home was broken into while we were all out at the dentist.
My eldest daughter had entered the house first (which we never let the kids do anymore, BTW...cuz what if they'd still been there, y'know) and found the door plates and screws on the floor.
She came to the back hall holding them out to us and our first thought was that the skylight had busted.

Nope. Kids kicked in the front door. One 18, one 15 and one 13.
Police eventually caught them but not before they had hawked all of the stuff they stole and hit 13 other homes in the neighbourhood the same way. Good thing I'm not a jewelery hound. Was wearing the wedding band and my laptop was with me. They didn't get much. They messed up the place a ton, wrecked the front door and for their troubles got a portable CD player and an irreplaceable charm bracelet that had been given to me by my, now deceased, Grandmother....and nuthin' else.

We've since cut down the tree that was preventing our front door from being visible from the street.
Plus, we replaced the front door with one that's got a solid steel frame, is solid oak, and has a deadbolt that slides into the metal frame (so no more kick-throughs).
What was really sad, and what made all of the break-ins possible was the fact that we're in a working neighbourhood. Nobody knows or sees anybody.
Case in point, our neighbour across the street, when he saw the police car in the driveway, decided to come by and find out what had happened and if there was any way he could help out his new neighbours. He asked us when we'd moved in, suggesting that it must have been fairly recently. When we told him we'd been living there for the last 2 years the conversation got a little uncomfortable.

Yup. Sad.