Burglars!

Last week (sometime between Thursday night at about 8:30 and Saturday night at about 7) our apartment in Bakersfield was broken into. Dave and I had left Bakersfield on Wednesday afternoon to move me back up to Stockton for the next semester, and my little brother (Aaron) was given the keys to feed our fish. Aaron went to our apartment Thursday night to feed the fish. When he went back Saturday night he discovered that we'd been robbed.

Dave and I had been having a pleasant dinner on Saturday night at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Stockton with Carolyn (a pharmacy school friend), my oldest brother (Joe), and his girlfriend Kristin. Joe and Kristin were driving from Sacramento to Newman to visit her family and decided to stop by Stockton to eat with us on the way.

Around 7pm Aaron called my cell. I answered "Hi, almost birthday boy!" since his birthday was coming up on the 7th, and he replied "Steph, your apartment was broken into." I think I made him repeat himself 4 or 5 times before I realized he wasn't kidding and my eyes started crying. My voice doesn't work when I'm crying so I shoved the phone at Dave without saying anything.

Dave and I decided to drive back down to Bakersfield that night so we could help identify what was missing. From what Aaron could tell, our new 50" plasma TV, Dave's PS3 (which I got him for Christmas), and Dave's laptop were missing, but he didn't know what else. We figured we wouldn't make it in time to see the cops or to help with the police report since it's a 3 and a half hour drive, but we needed to know what was gone.

Aaron called the police and our mother at about 7. Mom only lives about a mile away, so she got to the scene of the crime pretty quickly. We kept in contact via phone as we drove. They told us that every drawer and cabinet had been left wide open and had been rummaged through. As we were driving I asked Dave why the robbers would bother going through all the drawers and cabinets when they left big stuff like the TV in our bedroom, an old DVD player, and PS2? The moment Dave said "They were probably looking for jewelry or cash" both our hearts sank. I broke out into tears (again) because we both immediately realized that Dave's wedding ring was probably gone. He lost some weight since the wedding and the ring doesn't fit anymore, so instead of wearing it and risking losing it, he leaves it on his nightstand. We called Aaron and he confirmed it was gone.

We beat the police home and looked through the apartment, trying not to touch anything. We only noticed a few more things gone: Dave has a vase he tosses his change into at the end of the day that was emptied and left behind; and from our small collection of liquor on the kitchen counter, a box of Crown Royal was gone.

Dave collects swords (none of which were stolen) and one from the living room had been unsheathed in the living room and dropped in the bedroom, which leads us to believe the robbers came at night and planned to chop up whoever was sleeping in the bed. Luckily we were both in Stockton!

The most fishy thing about this all (besides the fact that our apartment is UPSTAIRS and nobody knows where we live or that we have nice stuff) was that we'd granted the maintenance man permission to enter to replace our garbage disposal. He did that Thursday afternoon and probably got a good look at all the cool stuff in the apartment. In his defense, he's been hired at our complex for over 12 years and they've never had any problems. Dave has had him come in before to work on things and was OK with granting permission to enter.

As the geniuses that WE are, we had not gotten around to purchasing renters insurance or putting rods in the window panes, so we knew the stuff was gone forever.

When the policeman finally arrived at 6:45 THE NEXT MORNING, he dusted for fingerprints and made up the police report, but we knew there wasn't much we could do. He gave us a case number and told us that a detective would be assigned to the case later in the week.

Ultimately, we're both glad that nobody was hurt and that they left so much behind. We spent the next day with my family celebrating Aaron's birthday and it was good to help keep our minds off the break in.

I wasn't gonna post anything since this is all so depressing, but last night Mom saw something on the news about the police catching a burglar with a stockpile of big screen TVs, PS3s, jewelry, etc., so it's looking like we might have been part of a string of robberies.

Even if this is unrelated to our case and we never get our stuff back, I'm just glad SOMEONE got caught and SOME PEOPLE will get their Christmas back! Obviously, we'd love to have our things back, too, especially since NONE of it is even CLOSE to being paid off, but it's WAY too soon to get our hopes up.

Now I should probably pay attention to the lecture about diarrhea that I've been ignoring. :)