I was robbed. Please don't get robbed.

You might get robbed.  I’m not saying that you WILL, I’m saying that you might. 

I know that I tend to have behavior that errs on the side of assuming the worst is going to happen but hoping for the best, as I've described before here in this blog, but also in just my regular behavior.  For example, checking under the beds and basically doing a sweep of a room when entering unknown territory.  (Kate hates it when I do this when we are in hotels, just because it makes her nervous.)  

I also tend to lock doors everywhere, even when visiting folks in places that have no massive crime rates, like when I visit family who live in more remote places, or in Forks, WA (“Why did you lock the door?? Does anyone even OWN a house key to this place?”  You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.) 

I am usually just a hyper-aware person, and don’t be offended when I request that you walk in front of me, or when I ask you to hold your purse closer to your body.  I can’t help myself.  I’m ready to sucker punch anyone at almost any given point. 

One time I was walking through downtown Philadelphia very late at night (I had drifted away from my group because I am a slow walker) when some man came too close to me (I knew he was behind me for a few blocks) and he went to lay a hand on me, and I turned around and swung and nailed him.  He fell behind and crossed the street to get away from me, and it caused such a commotion that I was okay after that.  But perhaps since I have so many stories like this, that is why I am the way I am.

So, because I care about you so much, I have been thinking about you and your safety.  I am WELL aware that I am at an extreme end of the spectrum, so I probably think about these things more than you do (or should have to), but I hope that you’ll listen to what I have to say.
 

I don’t know if you know this, but my house was robbed about 14 months ago.  I didn’t tell everyone about it.  I don’t share major, major news with everyone until it has lonnng past (i.e. this entry), if ever.  I had a roommate at the time, and thankfully, the burglar did not even go up to her lair.  He did, however, get a lot of my stuff, like my laptop, a lot of jewelry including my dad’s wedding band, my Kindle, my camera, my passport and credit cards.  It sucked.

It sucks losing “stuff”, but it also sucks knowing that some dirty stranger just walked through your safety zone; the place you go to cuddle on the sofa with soup when you are not feeling well, where you play cards and watch TV and drink wine with your friends and family and cats.

Coming home that day, after the police left, what was louder than the loss of things and the work to be done logistically was the work to be done inside of both me and my roommate.  There is no amount of washing the bed linens and scrubbing away the fingerprinting powder (which was on literally everything) that will clean off the image of some thief running their grimy fingers on all of your stuff.

When the one place you should feel absolute refuge has been violated in the worst way, it changes something in you.  Something more than my laptop and my things were stolen that day from me. 

I have since purchased a maahhhhsive fancy security system, which video records and then sends me a message if anyone even so much as walks near my fence.  I also get about 30 notifications per day, with video clips of the cats walking all around the house. 

But this morning whilst I was brushing my teeth, I was worrying about you.  And I was thinking of what little things you could do to create a barrier of safety for yourself and your things.

While it really was awful that I was robbed, there are a few things that went to my benefit.  Because of my natural behaviors described above, it could have been a lot worse than it was.  I want to share some things with you about what I did right, and what I would change.

First of All, Put Yourself On The Map

Introduce yourself to your neighbors, or at the very least, be on waving-in-the-morning terms with them.  I know that in this day and age, we have grown to be very uncomfortable with actual face to face time with people we don’t know.  Listen, I’m not here to tell you how to interact with humans, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure that other humans know that you exist, and that you are on their “radar.” 

When my ex-long-term-boyfriend moved out of the house a few years back, one of the first things I did was go over to the neighbor’s house (he is a retired Baltimore city cop) and told him of the situation.  I told him that I am a single female, and that I need him to watch over me.  I told him, “If something looks wrong, it IS wrong.”  If anyone is ever creeping around my house, or if there are unknown people in my yard – call the cops.   He was very understanding, and I tell you what – he has looked out for me, all of these years. 

It goes both ways – if there is someone going around the neighborhood knocking on doors, I call him, just to make sure everything is okay, and he’ll tell me what the deal is, or he’ll run outside and ask.  If someone parks in front of my house and starts creeping around my house, even if they have a house key, he either calls me within seconds, or he runs out and is writing down their license plate number and car description.  I got a call once from my friend who was entering my house with their baby while I wasn’t home, and he was like, “Um.. your neighbor is taking down my license plate number…” and within seconds, the neighbor called me. 

That day when my house was broken into, he was the one who called me.  He gave me a whole log of the day’s activities; how his wife mentioned that something was weird around 10 AM, and then my front door was open around 11 AM, and he knew that we were at work.   He ran out to the store, and when he returned home around 1 PM, he saw my cat outside, and he knew something was very wrong, so he called me right away and asked if I was okay, told me about what he had seen.  He then ran over to my property to let the cat in, and he looked around the house to confirm that the window was broken, and that I had been robbed.

The other neighbors had a pretty big response to my burglary, and it was a big wake up call to them.  So, put yourself on the map.  Care for each other.  Look out for each other.  You don’t even have to like one another, but make sure that you are looking out for your brethren.

This goes for everything, not just your home.  When we go camping, Kake used to get kind of awkward (now she knows why I do it) when I would make a point to engage our camping neighbors in even the briefest of conversations.  On hiking trails, if we pass humans in the wild, I make a point to say hello – anything to put US on other people’s radar.  That way, if we go missing, there can be a good timetable given by witnesses.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Make an impression – be on the radar.  Hold other people on your radar.

Keep Things In Separate Places

I don’t know why I started doing this, but I do.  It’s another thing that just comes to me.  The burglar went through my kitchen window, went in my bedroom, and went to work on my drawers, under my bed, my closet, and my jewelry box.  Do you have a jewelry box?  Listen to what I am about to say. 

I do not keep all of my jewelry in one place.  Honestly, I don’t even remember where a lot of it is, so don’t try to rob me (not that I have anything left.)  But one thing that saved a couple of precious pieces that day is that I kept some very special things in other places.  Yes, the only really expensive jewelry I owned was in the jewelry box, and he got that.   But fortunately, for some stuff that is not worth very much money, but has a lot of sentimental value, I keep that in various places.  If I had kept it all in my jewelry box, he might have seen it, thought it was worth $20, and pocketed it – not knowing that to me, the value of that same item was actually priceless because it belonged to my Grandmother.  You know? 

Think about how you can dampen the loss around your house.  Store things separately.  Put things in cupboards,  split up your jewelry box.  Keep really fancy stuff that you never wear someplace different than stuff you wear every day.

Lock Your Computer and Other Assets

I often used to think to myself, “Why do I have a lock on my own computer?  No one else even lives here!  It’s such a pain to log-in every single time, why do I do this to myself?”  Well, there’s your answer.    Good luck getting into that computer – I set the restrictions pretty clad. 

The “Don’t store everything in one place” rule applies here, too.  Even if they CAN get into that laptop, I have almost nothing sensitive on it, just about 4k photos, and some other documents.  But nothing like my social security number, tax documents, or anything like that was saved to the computer.  If it’s in digital form, it lives “in the cloud.”  Which, of course, has its own security threats, but hey, the laptop was stolen, and I changed all of my passwords to everything immediately.  So, again, “dampening the loss.”

Also, I called Amazon about my Kindle, and I can’t say enough nice things about the customer service.  She was very understanding, and she said, “Is it gone?  REALLY gone?  Like, you’ll never get it back?”  And I said it was REALLY gone.  She said, “Okay, then I will disable everything – no one will ever be able to log into that Kindle again – whoever owns it now owns a very expensive glass stone.”   She was also able to provide to me every single detail I needed to know about that device, which leads me to…

Keep All Serial Numbers For Everything

I know, it’s a pain.  But here’s the easy solution – take a photo of the serial tag for everything – your computer, your camera, your receipts when you buy either of those things, your TV, EVERYTHING.  Just take a picture with your phone, and send it to yourself, with a detailed description in the email, so that you can easily search for it, should you ever need to submit these things to the police.  The police will then check local pawn shops to make sure that no one has it, and then pawn shops will not buy your stuff from the thief.

Do You Have Insurance?

 I mean, do you?  I hope you do.  Don’t go around thinking nothing will ever happen.   Things can and will happen.  A tree is going to fall on your house or your car.  You will one day have back up flooding from your toilets, or pipes will break – you need flood insurance.  You need to have all of the insurance, including renters insurance. 

Do you have fine jewelry?  Please make sure that you have 1) taken pictures of the jewelry, and follow the same procedures as the serial numbers above and 2) see if you have jewelry insurance worked into your home insurance.  Maybe you need to raise your limits. 

 Don’t Assume Implausibility

We were really good about locking windows and doors.  You know how the robber got in?  He took a chair, the only chair in the back  yard, brought it over to my tiny kitchen window, about 18 feet off the ground, and jumped from the chair to climb into my tiny kitchen window.  We had left it cracked that morning, because it was so unlikely that anyone would even notice that it was cracked.  Even if my roommate STOOD ON MY SHOULDERS, she wouldn’t be able to reach the window.  That’s how high up this window is.  This guy really was an amazing climber. 

Don’t assume that you are safe just because it’s so unlikely that something could happen.  It can happen, it will happen, and it did happen to me.

Okay, well, that’s what I thought about whilst brushing my teeth this morning (hey, I have an electric toothbrush – a lot goes on in my mind in two minutes.)

 

Please be safe.  Take better care of yourself.  Watch your back, and protect your neighbor.