We were burgled.
On Monday morning, we came home from looking for new church shoes for Anne at the mall. When we got in the house, we noticed that there were two of our bags (a backpack and a clothing bag) out on the lawn by the back fence. I wondered why our bags were out on the lawn and my first thought was that Anne had drug the bags out there. Then I noticed that the back sliding door was wide open and we both realized that we had been burgled (or burglarized if you like, but burgled is such a funny word that I will use burgled). Apparently entry was gained by prying open the sliding door.
So I told Shari and Anne to stay outside while I made sure that the moral defective who burgled us was gone, and he was. So we all went inside and I called the police.
We noticed that our laptops and a couple other things were missing, and of course our house was ‘ransacked’. The good news is that the burglar didn’t actually get away with anything. It was all in the bags that he left on the back lawn. We must have scared it away when we arrived home. And the most important thing, of course, is that we are all safe.
So my main reason for writing this is to encourage everyone who reads my blog (both of you) to do a couple things that can make life harder for criminals.
1. If you have sensitive data on your computer, make sure your computer is password protected. And things like social security numbers, and bank account numbers should be encrypted as well.
My laptop was not password protected or encrypted, and it does have a lot of sensitive info. So if it was succesfully stolen, I would have to cancel our credit cards, bank accounts, and change every online password I have.
I have since encrypted, passworded, and actually locked my laptop to my desk with a cable lock.
2. Make sure you have a home inventory with serial numbers. This makes it much easier for the police to catch criminals and recover property. And it help out with insurance claims.
3. Put a ‘security bar’ on your sliding doors. We actually have one of these that we put in at night, but usually leave it out during the day. If we had put it in when we left, we might not have been burgled at all. These are nice, because they can also be used to brace your front door to prevent home invasions.
4. Put dowels in your sliding windows. The police officer that eventually came out suggested this idea, because it is so easy to break into sliding windows. So we went to ace and bought some 3/4” dowels, cut them to length and put them in the window tracks. Now, a criminal would have to break the glass to get in a window.
And for those keeping track, this makes it 2 stolen cars, a stolen bike, a stolen bike wheel, and a home burglary. All in less than 4 years.
