I've been on the fence about upcoming career options, and I think I'm finally pushed over the line to move on now. I understand that crime can happen in any city and even the best neighborhoods, but enough is enough.
I came home yesterday from work with pizzas planning to carve pumpkins and go trick-or-treating with my kids. Upon walking in the door, we noticed a broken window and missing laptop. I pushed my kids out the door and called 911 from the yard. For all I knew, someone was still in our home. The police promptly arrived and searched the house with guns drawn. The house was empty. One of us was allowed to walk through with the police to show what had been done since we last left the house. Apparently, lots of people store valuables in their dressers. We only have clothes! So the suspects opened every dresser drawer and dumped out all of our clothes, they tore boxes out of our closet and dumped contents on the floor and our bed, stole a list of items valued at about $3500 (including my laptop), and damaged our back door and completely broke one window and the blinds. All items were thrown off of my desk, papers, etc, our buffet was rifled through and contents thrown all over our living room, and so on. What really pisses me off is that the only cash in our home was in my son's bank. He had about $50 saved from various birthdays. He also had some collector coins from relatives. They broke his glass chess set when tearing through the closet and also took his game cube. It's such a weird situation as they took the laptop off of my desk, but left my digital camera and camcorder there. They also passed over about 100 DVDs on our fireplace mantle, tons of electronics, and tons of tools. Since we had to wait outside while the forensics team dusted the house, I took the kids to a neighbor's house to go trick-or-treating with them. The neighbor had been home with one of his sick kids that day and reported two teenagers going door to door offering to mow lawns without a lawnmower. It turns out that even though he was home, they still stole his kids' bike out of their garage. It was found a few hours later. So we think these two approximately 15-year-old boys are who did this. I'm relieved that it was probably just kids, and not dangerous professionals, and that no one was home and hurt when all of this took place, but also feel extremely violated. I know, it could have been worse, but still...
We have had several vandalisms and reported several incidents since living in this home. It's a good neighborhood by a very good school, which was our entire motivation for buying the home. It's just unfortunate.
Thanks for listening to me whine!