The Black Family: January 2009

This is an account of our burglary. I wanted to record all of the details for journaling purposes for our family. Other than us now having a new computer we don't really have anything new to share with the rest of you. We still have not replaced our t.v. or cameras so I don't have any new pictures to post either. This is so long that I did not go back and proof read it. Hopefully it all makes sense.

On Tuesday, January 6th our house was broken into. I had gone to two stores to run a few errands. The kids and I had just finished clearing the snow from the driveway and sidewalk. I put them into the car around 11:20. We ran to our two stores for errands and drove back into the driveway about 1 hour later. In the summer we tend to use the front door most of the time to go in and out of the house, but for the winter we try to use the side door because then we track the snow onto the tile at the side door. Well I pulled the car up to the side of the house to pull the kids out. I looked over at the door and noticed it was just a bit open. My first thought was that Kimball had not shut the door on the way out of the house, but I knew for a fact that I had locked and closed the door. I told Kimball to stay in the car with Hazel (she had fallen asleep). I walked up to the door and immediately noticed some metal screws on the floor. I was rather confused, it had not yet registered what had happened. I proceeded to push open the badly mangled door to pick up the metal pieces. I walked in the door and didn't notice anything out of place right at first. I walked to the office. It quickly registered what had happened. I had just vacuumed and cleaned the office that morning. There was nothing out of place in the office when we left other than the desk needed some organization. When I walking into the office it was a disaster. It seriously looked like a tornado had touched down in the office. The closet containing all of Andrew dress shirts is in the office and every shirt was pulled out of the closet and laying on the floor in a big pile. All of the drawers to our dresser where open as well as the desk. The 3 laptops that were in the office were all missing, the printer, and cameras that had been hanging in the closet. I said a naughty word. I walked to our adjoining bedroom. The bedroom had just been vacuumed and cleaned as well before we left. Now the bed was torn apart both nightstands opened and emptied, and the top of Andrew's side of the closet was emptied and all over the floor. I proceeded to walk to the hall. Half was up the stairs sat our receiver from our stereo system downstairs with speakers and cords everywhere. I knew that the TV would be gone without even walking down to see. For Christmas Andrew gave me a new Nikon D60 camera. It had been sitting on the piano in the living room, along with our Sony Handycam camcorder. The camera case had been sitting on the couch. They were all gone. Including the pictures from Christmas that were all on the card in the camera and the new video we had taken of Christmas morning with the kids and the most recent video of Hazel singing Santa Claus is coming to town. I said another naughty word. I ran downstairs to see what was missing for sure. The TV of course had been taken off the wall. The old PlayStation 1 that we've had for 8 years of more had been on the floor as Kimball had been playing Frogger before we left. It was gone with the controllers. The TV stand where all the movies are stored had been cleared out on one side. The kids DVDs were all gone, but all of Andrew's and mine had not been touched. (Go figure. . . I guess kids movies are more easily sold.) The kids bedrooms downstairs had virtually been untouched except for Kimball's new pillowcase that Grandma Black had made him for Christmas had been pulled off his pillow. (The cops told me that the thieves use them as bags to carry everything out.) My craft/sewing closet that is downstairs was open with the light on, but nothing had been taken from there, including my sewing machine, my Mom's surger I had borrowed, or three brand new sets of skies that were still in the wrappers. (We have been shocked over and over by the things that the thieves chose to take and leave behind.) I ran back upstairs to the kitchen. . . nothing was out of place in the kitchen, bathroom, or dinning room. I could see the kids outside from the kitchen and I ran to the phone and called 911. I was VERY angry and flustered. I'm sure between my adrenaline rush and anger I was even stuttering on the phone. The dispatcher told me she was sending an officer right over and not to touch anything because they would have to fingerprint everything.

I walked back outside in a fit of anger. I got Kimball out of the car and we walked around the yard. I explained to him that some people had come into our house to take our things. I explained that we were going to wait for the police to come and they would help us.

The mail carrier was walking up to our mailbox just as Kimball and I were standing outside. I spouted off of him about what had just happened. The poor man had to listen to this lunatic women go on and on about the condition of her house. What a nice guy! He offered advice as to who may have been home to witness such an occurrence.

I walked back inside to wait for the police. Kimball stood at the backdoor and waited.

The police walked up to the front door and said, "police". I yelled, "come in". He only had to push the door open. (I had not opened it for him and when I left it had been locked.) The officer allowed me to get Hazel (still asleep) out of the car and lay her down in her crib so she could nap. Kimball had not yet walked through the house, so I knelt down by him and explained that we were safe, that the police were going to be at our house now for awhile to help us, and that the bad people had taken some of our things and it might be upsetting to him. I prepared him by letting him know they had taken the PlayStation that he had been playing earlier. He was so brave. He seemed a little bit upset when I explained everything to him, but he didn't even cry. He was such a responsible boy the rest of the day!

The officer was very nice and walked through the house with me as I pointed out everything that I had noticed. He asked questions and pieced the whole incident together. In short the story is most likely as follows. . . the burglars knocked on the front door, when no one answered they went around to the side door and used some type of a device to break the door open. (There were no footprints on the door so they had not kicked it open, and the door was badly bent and damaged near the lock.) They came in and grabbed as much stuff as they possibly could carry or put it into the pillowcases from my pillow and Kimball's pillow. Then they unlocked the front door and walked out loading it into their car and driving away. The officer reassured me that they may have seen me leave, but they would not have been someone watching our house for a long time because they would have hit it at a time when we would have been leaving for a trip to Idaho. The burglars would most likely be drug users who were looking for loot that they could quickly grab and sell for more drug money. The burglars are not educated enough to know that art is worth money because they left all of the artwork in our home.

I was very bothered by the fact that this officer said the burglars would have knocked on the front door and since no one opened the door they went to the back. I tell my kids to not answer the door when I am in the shower. I asked the officer what to do in a situation like that. He then knelt down and told Kimball that when I am in the shower, or as he gets older and stays home by himself he should do this. . . when someone knocks on the door, run to the door and say in a loud voice "let me get my Mom". (There have been some recent robberies in Salt Lake involving burglars breaking into houses and a child has actually stayed home sick from school. The children have all been able to hide under beds and call 911.) So on that note this was good advice for officer to tell Kimball, except now Kimball is too nervous for me to get into the shower.

The next few hours were spent with this officer at our house going through everything with me and writing down serial numbers. There was a crime scene investigation officer that spent hours with black fingerprinting powder dusting everything. After the officers left I had a huge mess to clean up. Including black dust everywhere. I was very overwhelmed and stressed at this point. So the kids went to my friend, Christie's, house for a couple hours while I spent time on the phone with the insurance and everyone else I had to talk to. Andrew's cousin came over and helped me clean up finger print dust. (I was so afraid to be home alone after I took the kids to Christie's house I was so glad for the company.) Then our landlord came over and spent the next few hours with his hired hand replacing the back door. I now have a new back door complete with a dead bold, chain, and peek hole. Andrew was supposed to go to a meeting that night, but was able to get out of it with such a good excuse. We had friends from church come visit, our home teachers and a member of the bishopric all stop by to check on us that night after the kids had gone to bed. It was a long day. But in this one day we seemed to see evidence from some of those most thoughtless people to the loving support of some of the best people.

We have seen so many blessing despite this circumstance. We know that this was a rare situation that we never thought would ever happen to us, but it really is not a big deal. We are grateful for renters insurance, for having some of our pictures backed up, and that I did not come home with the kids while this whole robbery was happening. I have learned many lessons from this situation as well. Here is some advice: keep a file on very major purchase that you make include the receipts and serial numbers of everything. It is best to have pictures of everything in your house including details like prices and serial numbers included and put in another location like a safety deposit box or another family member's safe. Keep prescription medication in a location other than bathroom cabinets. Don't put money under your mattress or between your sheets (they will find it). Don't put valuables under your bed. Don't put guns or valuable in the top of closets. (The thieves even opened a 72 hour kit in the top of Andrew's closet looking for emergency money stashes.) BACK UP ALL YOUR PICTURES AND VIDEOS AND PUT THEM IN ANOTHER LOCATION!!!

I was really daring to walk into the house and walk through the whole thing. I guess I was not thinking straight or just very confident that nobody was still in the house. If I ever had a situation like this again I would advise anyone to quickly leave the premise and call the police from somewhere else. I was very lucky that the intruders were gone, we can only speculate about how much worse things could have been had I come home while the intruders were still there.

After calculating how much it would cost us to replace everything that they took we figure they got away with nearly $10,000 worth of stuff. All the little things that they took all added up. Here are some of the major things that the thieves got away with: 3 laptops, a printer, video camera, 3 camera, SD cards, and memory sticks, flat panel T.V., Andrew's gun, about 30-35 kids movies, and many many more items that I cannot even begin to list. Our insurance has issued us a check and we will be able to replace the things that we need, but in the long run the most valuable things that they took cannot be replaced, pictures and videos of the kids. We only had a few things stolen, I cannot imagine going through this whole process if it was something as devastating as a house fire. Hopefully if some of you have learned a lesson from this experience that we have had you will be able to prevent a bad situation in your lives ever happening.