Our house was robbed today ..,

LOL!  When it happened to us, it was mid afternoon.  The creatins where scared off when my high schooler and middle schooler's bus arrived.  It's only 100ft or so from the road to our house.  The kids came in the front door as usual and when they came into the dining room, my daughter saw the whole thing just torn apart and her first thought?  "Wow, Mom must have been really pissed about something this morning before she went to work."  

We had a family computer (laptop) at that time.  It was set up in the dining room with a monitor.  She called me asking where the laptop was.  And then realized that both monitors (I had just recently purchased a new laptop for myself because the screen on the original laptop was cracked) were gone, along with our brand new printer.  This all came to her as she was talking to me (asking where the laptop was) on the phone....then she gasped and yelled:  "Mom! I think we've been robbed!"

Can I just say that is NOT what you want to hear when you are 24 miles away?!  I told her to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE, call 911 and go to the neighbors.  I then called a friend who lived near us and is a stay at home mom, so there was a good chance she'd be home.  She went and stayed with them until the police arrived and I could get home (hubby works construction and was further away than I, as well as not able to leave the job site).


We had had several car break-ins in the preceding weeks. Including my van, which I only realized after learning others in our neighborhood had been hit the same night.  There was nothing taken from my car because I must have scared them off when I did a late night (11pm) check on my horses before going to bed.  The reason I know someone was in my car was that some items I kept in the pocket of my door were strewn all over the front seat.  After querying my husband and kids as to whether they had done this, it was then I learned of the other break-ins.  It was 3 weeks later when they hit the house.

They made entry through an unlocked basement door.  The police told us it really didn't matter...they would have just broken the window instead...we saved ourselves the cleanup/repair work.  We were told that despite having serial numbers for the missing items (2 new monitors, a new all-in-one printer and a laptop with a broken screen), we would likely never recover our things. And the cretins would only get caught if they were caught in the moment.  The prevailing theory for this "crime wave" in our area was that it was local teenagers looking for easy money to buy drugs.   He was right...we've never heard another thing about it.

ETA:  we live in a fairly rural area.  The cretins "cased" houses by watching for departure/return schedules.  I worked from home 2 days a week then.  My husband had been out of work for 2.5 years and had just gone back to work about 2 weeks prior.  They picked a day when they obviously knew I was not home and that my husband was now gone too.  They screwed up with the timing though, cutting it so close to when my kids arrived home from school.  The police said it was obvious they left in a hurry (likely out the same basement door they came in) due to all the things they missed (the other new laptop, Xbox, etc.)

I get a bit of satisfaction knowing that they a ) stole the laptop that was useless without a monitor and b ) didn't take a single power cord, so the laptop and printer were also useless unless they purchased new ones.  My guess is our stuff ended up in a dumpster somewhere.

How frightening! I'm so sorry.

Keep an eye out on craigslist for your valuable stuff that the thieves could be trying to sell.

OP, did you get any rest last night? I remember how difficult it was to get any sleep for several weeks after my house was broken into.

i hope you get your things back...thanks for the reminders.

I'm sorry this happened to you ((hugs))

I'm so sorry  I know that sense of violation you feel. My parent's house was robbed a few years ago and even though it wasn't MY house, it was/is our family house. The house we would always feel safe and secure in.

They got an alarm and we also got an alarm just because of that break in. My mom never got any of her items back. They took many sentimental jewelry items. Luckily they didn't take their safe and my dad's coin collection. And most of all they were not home when it happened.

How horrible for you and everyone who has had this happen. We have had our cars broken into in our driveway but all they got were some old CDs and change thank goodness. DH never locked his truck but started doing so after that. We also installed motion detector lights around the house which are a bit of a pain because raccoons, cats etc set them off too but better safe than sorry!