The Break-In

We pulled into our driveway that Saturday night after the show.  I felt rejuvenated.  I was already dreaming of the last day of our weekend off.  Buddy met us at our car.  He seemed sad, especially starving for attention.  We hadn't paid much attention to him in the last few weeks.  I was sure he had probably been acting like this for a while and I was just too busy to notice.  We gave him a few pats and then headed inside.

Johnie was the first to go in the house.  He was in the dining room by the time I was at the top of the stairs in the kitchen.  Light was shining through the dining room windows and I just couldn't figure out what was in the floor just a few feet from him.  I flipped on the light and discovered it was one of my jewelry boxes, turned upside down with the contents spilled across the floor.  My eyes darted to the vanity where the box was supposed to sit.  The drawer was open.  I was angry.

Why does he have to be so careless?  I thought.  It would have only taken a second to close the drawer back and how did he knock that jewelry box off?!?  It's probably broken.  Johnie's back was still to me.  The front door looked like it wasn't shut all the way. Had we forgotten to close it?  What is that gold thing in the floor there in front of the door?

Something wasn't right.  I broke the silence.  "Has someone been here?"  Johnie's hands went up to his head.  "Yes."

With that, I grabbed the phone and dialed 911.  As the phone rang it hit me that I didn't know where the burglar was.  As I recounted the last few minutes to the dispatcher on the other end, she advised me to go outside to wait for the police.  About that time, an unfamiliar car pulled into our driveway.  The dispatcher told me to use my best judgement as to what to do.

My judgement wasn't very good.  Laughably now, I "hid" - in plain view - in the corner of the dining room.  My reasoning was that I should be able to see the burglar come from any part of the house, as well as be protected from any stray bullets he might fire outside my vision.

I'll go ahead and save you the suspense.  The thief was gone before we arrived.  The car in our driveway turned out to be friends of our neighbor.  The police showed up in what seemed like hours, but was only a few minutes.  After a quick search of the house, they began assessing the damage with us.  Initially, Johnie and I were both relieved.

I had left my purse on the coffee table, open, with money visible inside it.  It hadn't been touched.  The opened vanity drawer stored our passports, social security cards, birth certificates, and several credit cards that we didn't use on a regular basis.  All untouched.  Johnie's guns were safe.  The guy (or girl) had kicked in the door (it was the lock on the floor that I had noticed earlier), taken a pillowcase, and dropped a glove.  What a silly criminal!  We were ready to send the law officers on their way.

"Please walk through every room of the house with us and look them over carefully for things that are missing," one cop advised.  We followed him into our office.  Nothing really seemed out of place.  Big flat screen monitor was still there.  Johnie checked our financial files in there.  They hadn't been touched. 

I stared at my desk.  I almost never unplugged my laptop cord.  Even though I would carry my laptop from room to room, I always left the cord in the office.  I didn't remember unplugging it.  And, I couldn't remember where my laptop was. 

It seemed there was a laptop shaped hole on my desk with stacks of papers neatly framing where it should have been.  It was odd.  I continued to stare.  I walked over to my desk and examined it closely.  I couldn't remember moving my laptop, and usually when I did the papers around it didn't remain intact for long.  "Johnie, do you know where my laptop is?"

His head turned to my desk.  "They took it."  We described it to the police.

We walked into our bedroom.  Nothing seemed out of place.  "So, I guess they just took the laptop," Johnie said.  My eyes swept past the dresser.  I kept all my rings in a little silver heart jewelry box.  That jewelry box usually sat in the middle of the dresser.  It wasn't there.  I racked my brain but could not remember moving it.  I needed to go down to the basement to check if I had taken it down there.  "They may have taken a jewelry box.  It usually sits here.  I may have moved it, but I can't remember." 

"Wasn't there something else on the dresser?"  Johnie asked.  "Yes!.... A bucket."  I turned to the officers.  "We also had a silver bucket sitting there on the corner."  I blushed a little.  "It just had some letters in it, between us."  In a marriage study at church, we were all given a little bucket to decorate and then drop love notes to one another in.  Then I remembered what else I had stored in there.  "Oh!  And it also had some old coins.  Mostly half-dollars and silver dollars.  About $20 worth." 

As a very young child, two of my uncles would give me coins whenever I would visit them.  I saved them up in a Minnie Mouse bank from my great grandmother.  The previous Christmas my grandfather had asked me to take the coins home with me for safe keeping.  I brought them home (minus Minnie) and dropped them in the bucket on our dresser. 

And, I also remembered seconds later, the bucket also held a carved arrowhead stone my grandfather had given me years ago.  Now this crook was really making me mad!  Those coins were important to me!  And that arrowhead was one of a kind!

I asked the cops if we should go ahead and change all of our online passwords.  Johnie and I had just dealt with a credit card theft a few months prior.  It was a headache, and our initial fear was that we were going to have to go through all of that again- with every single card.  They agreed it would be a good idea, and I sat down at our computer to do that.

As I began logging into our accounts, I was mentally congratulating myself.  Our house had been broken into.  We both felt lucky that things weren't worse.  I always thought that I would be devastated if my house was broken into.  I wasn't crying, and after the whole dining-room-gun scare, I wasn't even nervous or afraid.  I was ready to send the cops on their way, bar up our door for the night and go to sleep.

An officer followed me into the room and began asking questions.  I described the missing jewelry box for him.  He asked about it's contents.  "Oh, just some rings," I answered.  "Probably about 10 or 12."  He asked me to describe them.

My aunt had given me a few diamond solitaires.  Those wouldn't really be distinguishable.  I remembered my high school class ring and described it.  That was a little frustrating to me, but I could always just have another one made.  Then it hit me.  "And..."  I lost it.  I began reacting in the way I had imagined I would after being robbed.  My hands went to my face as I let out heavy sobs.  Johnie came to my side. 

I composed myself enough to finish, "a gold Kentucky cluster ring.  It was my grandmother's 25th anniversary ring."  It was my prized possession.  As creepy - or sickening - as it may sound, I had never cleaned the ring.  It was one of the few rings my grandmother always wore, and as such, it had much dirt built up underneath it.  I clung to the ring - and it's dirt - as a lasting reminder of my grandmother.  I was shocked when my grandfather gave it to me, and felt so undeserving of such a special item.  And the thief took it!

I morphed from a logical, sane person into a crazy lady ready to scour the city in search of pillowcases and a dirty cluster diamond with a broken gold prong.  Much to my dismay, no one in Kansas seemed to even know what a Kentucky cluster was.  The police were really nice, but my faith in their ability to recover the ring wavered with this knowledge. 

As the reality slowly hit me that I was completely helpless and completely defenseless to a person entering my house and taking my things, my anxiety and fear increased.  I sat down in a chair in the living room, exhausted.

I felt so violated.  Not only had a complete stranger pilfered through my very personal possessions, but now multiple police officers were walking through and photographing every room of my house.  I wavered between asking them if I could tidy up before they snapped the photos, asking them if they could explain to anyone who looked at the pictures that we had been really busy and stressed out these past few weeks and normally didn't leave dirty dishes in our living room (we had eaten dinner in front of TV and left our dishes on the coffee table), and just asking them to leave and let us put our house back in order.

I decided just to stay out of their way and let them do what they wanted.  And when it was time for them to leave, all I wanted to ask was if one of them would stand guard on our porch for the rest of the night.  When the last officer stopped at the door, turned, and asked if we had any questions, I began grasping at possible queries that sounded less bizarre than my personal cop request.

"Do you know why our house was broken into?"

"It was probably just random.  Similar break-ins have been happening all over the city."

"Do you think they'll come back... like they just staked out our house?"

"Probably not."

"Is there anything we can do to help prevent this from happening again?"

"Always keep a light on in your house, and keep your porch light on."

Now I was grasping more frantically.  I watered down my request as best I could. "Will there be officers patrolling this street tonight?"

Johnie's dad made it to our house just before the cops left.  I felt torn.  I didn't want to leave my house, but I also didn't want to stay in my house without someone keeping guard that night.  Instead, Johnie's dad boarded up our door and we went home with him.

I spent the night awake, wondering who would have broken into our house and why.  In those first moments, I had imagined a hardened criminal watching us for weeks before making his move - knowing exactly where we kept all of our valuables and personal information.  As I processed it that night, I began to agree with the cops' assessment that it was probably someone who saw a dark house and wanted some items to pawn for a few bucks.

I thought about where my grandmother's ring would be in the city.  How I could find it.  I wanted to put an ad in the paper.  I was sure I'd pay the burglar more than any pawn shop or gold buyer to have that ring back.  I thought about the price of gold and how the ring would probably be sold and melted.  The thought still brings tears to my eyes.

In the following days, we filed our insurance claim, our dear friend hung a new - and much more secure - door for us, and we put our life back together.  Johnie continued with his classes, we both continued with our jobs.  I had another conference that week.  I longed for a break even more than I had before the "relaxing" weekend started, but the whirlwind continued.