Eight Minutes of Selfishness

On Thursday, January 26, 2012, something unprecedented happened: We were robbed.

Mary called me at ~12:30 in tears.  Her first words were that she had just had a call from Fairfax County Police--and instantly my heart leapt to, What happened at South County?  But no, we had been robbed; we both jumped in our cars and headed home.

What seems to have happened was that just after noon, one of our neighbors heard loud banging and looked outside to see a man kicking in our front door.  She and her husband called the police at 12:09 as he was kicking in the door, but before the police could respond at 12:17, he had already done what he came for and left.  Neighbors all around got a good look at him--yes, one guy, but what a world of hurt he's caused.

He shattered our front door by kicking the deadbolt out of the frame, and managed to split the frame on the hinge side as well, so much so that daylight shone through the crack.  The doorknob punched a hole in the wall behind the door.  He grabbed the Macbook laptop off my desk in the study, and opened drawers in that room looking for other valuables; luckily he didn't find, or take, anything.

However, the bulk of the damage he inflicted was upstairs.  He apparently dumped the contents of the top two drawers of Mary's and my dressers into one of our bedsheets and pillowcases, thereby making off with virtually every bit of our jewelry and cash in the house.  He took one of her jewelry boxes, and my valet box with all of my cufflinks and pins in it.  In cleaning us out, he took the Tiffany pieces I'd given Mary when each of the kids were born; the Swarovski necklaces I'd given her; the sapphire ring her parents had given her for graduating high school; Uncle Albert's pocket watch and onyx ring; every Scout pin David had earned and presented to me (including the God & Me Mentor pin); Pappap's silver cufflinks, and all the others Mary and Mom had given me over the years (except the pair I happened to be wearing that day); Nana K.'s pearls; and many of the kids' baby teeth.  He also looked briefly in my other dresser drawers and in the closet, where he looked in a suitcase for more goodies (but found only more suitcases).

The trio of police were very helpful; they processed for fingerprints, but were only able to confirm what a neighbor had said: he was seen pulling off black leather gloves.  So no fingerprints.  They imaged where he had kicked in the door, and loaded the missing laptop immediately into the stolen property database.  They were processing the house for a couple of hours, during which we calmed down a bit and went to thank the neighbors for calling it in.  We were talking with another neighbor out front when David came around the corner and saw, with evident alarm, the police presence and Mary and I home.  We explained what had happened; his first concern was for Piggy, who was home and still safe on the kitchen table (along with his Xbox and Wii controllers and iPod--so if the burglar'd actually made it that far into the home, those would have been gone too).  David observed the police a bit and went to watch TV, presumably to calm down some.  I went to get Sarah around 4 or so, and explained to her at school what had happened and that as far as we know, all of her stuff was safe.  She was more upset, sobbing a bit about it.  I'm sure we'll all have tears before this is done.  Later, after dinner, made arrangements to secure the door ahead of our flights to Vermont the next day--which we were determined to go ahead with; he wasn't going to win and change our lives.

In the end, most of what he got was just things we can replace.  Some of what he took, like my 10-year Bureau service pin, cannot be replaced.  Yes, I'll get my 20-year pin and a new laptop, but that's not the point: I'll never think quite as securely about our home and its vulnerability for Mary and the kids to the kinds of acts of unrestrained selfishness that ruled for eight minutes in our home that day.  The unease we feel, the tears that came to Mary in fits that night, are the most painful part of the legacy this one guy left us in a few minutes in our home.  But it's just stuff.  Nobody got hurt, nobody else had to come home and find it all.  Our real treasure is elsewhere.  All he got is stuff.