I left my car unlocked in the parking lot of my crappy efficency apartment (for which I had a roommate). It happened to be the one night I had gotten back at 2am from my crappy job and had to be in at 8am the next morning so I had left basically everything in my car including my checkbook, license, and social security card.

It was fun seeing where they spent my money for a while, but what I didn't understand was: How can you write a check, and use a license when you are a completely different person than the person pictured on the license????

I was living in a bit of a bad neighborhood in Minneapolis when some idiots smashed a bunch of windows in my apartment parking lot. They didn't steal anything, I had nothing of value to steal in the car, but stealing wasn't the point. Destruction was. Somehow, I just don't get how that is funny.

My friend Nono here in France had FIVE stereos stolen out of his car before he gave up and stopped replacing them. They then stole his car.

I've found Texas thieves to be particularly nice. I was mugged not once but twice outside the River Center in San Antonio and after lifting the cash out of my wallet, the thieves gave me back all my credit cards and ID cards. Thought that was nice of 'em. Even said 'Thanks, Little Lady' after knocking me on my ass.

we have the only house on the block with a streetlight above it. I thought it would make our home more secure when we purchased it. It only provides more light to better smash our car windows in. We average a car break-in about once a year :( (yes in SLC). One time, they stole a diaper bag (full of some funky stuff), but left anything of real value. Another time, they stole a broken CD player, which was comical, but not so much when we had to pay $200 to get that little glass window fixed. Did you know they break the little window not to be nice, but because it makes less noise?

Oh Heather, sweetie - that totally sucks so much ass! I had my car broken into the day after I drove back from my Mom's house for Christmas vacation. I had all my gifts & luggage in the car - they went through everything & decided to steal... my glasses! Not sunglasses, mind you - my real, actual glasses I wear in order to see clearly.

Ugh.

Man that sucks!

When I was 17 I drove a 1977 Buick Regal. I never locked it because well the car itself wasn't even worth $500. While over at a friends house someone 'broke in' and took my ghetto blaster I had in my car because the stereo didn't work. Ok I know we don't call them that anymore but we did back then and mine was stolen. Bastards!

But more than that I felt violated. Like someone strange person had touched all of my stuff. I really have never felt more violated in my life.

About 10 years ago I bought a new car with a CD player that had a detachable face plate. My friend and I drove to Seattle, parked the car in a nice enough neighborhood, and went to visit a friend, taking my face plate with me. The next morning I went down and found the CD player gone, all the change removed from the ash tray and a parking ticket on the windshield.

It turned out that car was bad luck. I had the stereo stolen from it four times.

Two weeks after I moved to Los Angeles (at 21 years old), I had about 90 CDs stolen out of my car. Seven years later, I can't think of a more appropriate welcome to LA.

About 10 years ago I bought a new car with a CD player that had a detachable face plate. My friend and I drove to Seattle, parked the car in a nice enough neighborhood, and went to visit a friend, taking my face plate with me. The next morning I went down and found the CD player gone, all the change removed from the ash tray and a parking ticket on the windshield.

It turned out that car was bad luck. I had the stereo stolen from it four times.

A few years ago someone broke into our van, which was parked in our driveway, and stole my husband's cell phone. Before we even knew the van had been broken into, or the phone was missing, I received a call while we were sitting watching TV and noticed it was his number. He was sitting right beside me so I said "uh-oh" and answered the call. Turns out a few of our "neighbours" who were short on beer money had browkn into the van, taken the phone, and wanted hubby to meet them at the end of the alley at the liquor store and buy them 4 bottles of malt liquor - and then they would return the phone. He met them, bought them the booze they wanted and then, as promised, they gave him back the phone. All's well that ends well I guess.....

My Husband had been driving the same '93 Honda Civic hatchback since highschool when it was stolen last year. They managed to rip out everything, seats, knobs, even the cigrette lighter and the door to the glove box. Once they took everything they wanted they took the tires and PUT BACK ON 4 other tires, smashed everythign they could and left it for us to find.

When we did find the car a week later, they had carefully put the regestration and insurance card right where the drivers seat had been so we would find it, as well as leaving the suit jacket I had left in the car hanging from thoses hooks over the doors!

My car was broken into when I was camping many years ago. (I'm still not sure how he did it, as the tent was about 30 inches from where the car was parked.)

The thief stole:
my stinky, raggedy 5 year old Birkenstocks
my dirty laundry bag, complete with socks and underwear from the previous day
my camera
tickets to the whale watching sail that I was going on the next day
my journal, filled with all kinds of adolescent mutterings

He left:
my clean clothes (thanks!)
the portable CD player that was plugged into the tape deck ON THE DASH
my cell phone
the food

Really? My stinky shoes have some kind of value that my cell phone doesn't? I still can't figure out what was going through his head.

I managed to go on the boat ride the next day, and when I got back on dry land I received a call that all of my things had been recovered. It turns out that the thief got into a fight with his girlfriend over breakfast and she called the cops and turned him in. I don't have any pictures of the whales I saw, but I'll never forget the trip!

FlakeyBlakee- I think the reason your seats were cut was because the theieves were looking for drugs. A friend of mine received an early 1980's Oldsmobile for her 18th birthday (in 1996). It was stolen just a few days after she got it, but was found abandoned a week later. The thieves were nice enough to leave the "Happy 18th Birthday" helium balloon her parents put in the car when they purchased it for her, but they did slash all the upholstery. The cops told the friend that the theieves mistook her car for a drug car and were looking fro the hidden goods.

FlakeyBlakee- I think the reason your seats were cut was because the thieves were looking for drugs. A friend of mine received an early 1980's Oldsmobile for her 18th birthday (in 1996). It was stolen just a few days after she got it, but was found abandoned a week later. The thieves were nice enough to leave the "Happy 18th Birthday" helium balloon her parents put in the car when they purchased it for her, but they did slash all the upholstery. The cops told the friend that the thieves mistook her car for a drug car and were looking fro the hidden goods.

That sucks!

My roommate in grad school was borrowing her mother's car temporarily and the window was smashed by some real fancy-like thieves. They left her grandfather's expensive tools, and her expensive sunglasses, and took--get this--her mother's $5 drugstore wrap around clip on, a la post-laser eye surgery, sunglasses.

I have a good one for you.

Back when my fiance was a pizza boy he used to keep change and low dollars just scattered around his truck.

One night, the car gets broken into through a smashed window and the stereo gets ripped out.

What still makes me laugh is that:
1) the doors were both unlocked.
2) they didn't steal any money - the dollars & change weren't even touched.
3) the stereo was the original tape cassette player, and they couldn't even get it fully out. They just cut up the dash board, pulled it halfway out and gave up.

We're still debating whether they were retarded 12 year olds or really, really high.

Goodness! So sorry, it feels so dirty, doesn't it?

Also, woot for sharing! Last summer (six months after moving into our new house) my boyfriend and I went to get into the car for work one morning after a night of being unlocked and realized that a homeless person had slept in our car that night and left us an empty forty in the front seat. Luckily all he stole was a carryon suitcase, albeit a nice suitcase.

That suitcase, unlike the scenario above was filled with law school books (including criminal law!) and frilly underwear that we had packed last minute before moving and had neglected in our trunk. Somewhere in Philadelphia there's a homeless person (or his girlfriend) dressed in a frilly set of drawers and corset while debating whether they like property law or criminal law better. (Or they sold the whole lot for five dollars to get another crack rock, either way.)

Oh yeah....been there, done that. NOT. FUN. Walking up to the drivers side door, and seeing it "not quite closed all the way" and I KNEW some a-hole had broken in. Sure enuf, I was right. The stereo was gone, and left in its place was just a bunch of wires hanging out there like car guts. I felt violated.

My wife left her purse in our unlocked van. The inevitable theft happened. Checks. Two ATM cards. Our AmEx card. Her corporate AmEx card. Her Blackberry. Somehow they figured out her PIN number on the ATM card and then they went to town.

Within the space of 1.5 days (the time it took for us to figure out her purse was indeed gone (it was the weekend when it happened)) there were THOUSANDS of dollars in charges and ATM withdrawals all over the SLC valley. I haven't added it all up but it's well over $15K.

As a matter of fact just yesterday I faxed over MORE affidavits of fraud on some forged checks.

It's the pain that keeps on giving!

(Luckily, we've gotten all our money back. The bank was surprisingly cool.)

We used to live in Marina del Rey right around the corner from the LAPD Pacific substation. We could hear the cops everytime they came or went and could see the station from our patio. Every single week at least one person would wake up to find the glass from their smashed windows everywhere and their stereos and who knows what else gone. The police never caught the person who did it and insisted that there was absolutely nothing they could do about it even though the street practically dead ended into their parking lot. The best was when it happend on street sweeping days when you know the parking enforcement guy was sitting on his arse just waiting to ticket that one person who forgot (or was too hung over) to move his car.

I started to send an email about ours too, but got distracted. Glad you opened comments on this one.

Our break happened Christmas Morning this last year. You read that right. CHRISTMAS MORNING. We were loading the kids and my mom in our van to leave to visit family about 9am that morning and my husband noticed that the door of his 71 Buick GS Convertible was part way open. He checked it and sure enough they had stolen speakers and tried to get the stereo out--without much success. The face plate was missing too--but he looked around the yard and found it dropped by the curb. We think it fell out of the thief's pocket.

I asked my husband why they'd take a face plate if they can't get the stereo out (he used to sell car stereos) and he said that even though they can't do anything with the plate he thinks the thieves are pissed off they can't get the stereo and figure they will fuck you any way they can. If they can't take your stereo--they sure aren't going to leave you with a working one.

Them's quality people, I tell ya.

My "considerate" thief smashed a small window too. It turns out that a triangle window costs roughly $50 more than the stereo!

And that is why thieves suck.

My senior year in college, I was doing laundry late on a Friday night at a bar/laundromat. (Kent, OH is a GREAT college town.) I just finished a very profitable shift at the restaurant where I waited tables.

As I made my second trip to the car with a basket of clean clothes, I saw that one of the back doors were open. (I hadn't locked it - I was coming back out with my hands full, dammit.) Two witnesses said they saw some kids on skateboards watch me walk to the car and back into the laundromat before opening the door and taking my backpack.

The next day, police found remnants of my backpack strewn about a local highway. My evening's earnings were gone, natch, but the most devastating loss was my planner - in it were two disks that contained my 130-page honors thesis, which I was to defend the next week.

It was honestly the only time that I understood why people considered suicide a viable alternative to their shitty lives.

After a week of no sleep, I was able to recreate the thesis from notes and got an 'A' at my defense. I just hope those little shits popped in those disks and enjoyed my diatribe on "A Feminist Justification for the Protection of Pornography."

Went on a date one time, and one of our cars was left at a University Parking lot. Came back a few hours later and someone had broken into the car, tossed around all the papers and grabbed the stereo. They missed one thing though...The two $100 dollar bills that had fallen out of the ashtray when they pulled it out. The bills were sitting on the seat, on top of the papers that had been scattered. Couldn't even manage to get the easy money.

A friend of mine took my daughter and hers to the American Girl Place in Chicago. Her car was broken into while they were there. Amazing the IPOD was NOT stolen. It was in plain sight too. The theives only took the snacks and dvds.

Just 3 weeks ago my apartment was burglarized in broad daylight. They kicked in the door, stole my imac, ibook, ipod, digital camera, new flatscreen TV and some other misc. electronics. The insurance covered replacing all those things but not my sanity. Every person I look at I think the worst of now. Every noise I hear is someone breaking in to kill me. I moved this past weekend because I couldn't get any sleep there anymore. It makes me so angry that I let them drive me out of my own home...but I really couldn't be there anymore.

I was just thinking about the last time my car was broken into. I had a mustang convertible and they smashed out the window and stole my cell phone and my radar detector. What a nightmare! I was happy they didn't slash the top, but I was living in Baltimore and I was not pleased about driving home in the cold at 2 in the morning with no window. I guess it was my stupidity for leaving that stuff out in the open.

I really wish that I had the time to read the other comments, man I bet there are some great stories.

When my husband and I lived in Colorado my car was broken into one night. It was just a few days after Halloween, and the perps stole my costume butterfly wings! What idiots. They also stole a backpack that had stuff in it, like my husbands $600 mp3 player (back when they were so new) - but the butterfly wings were on top of the backpack! That's what they went in for. In their defense, they were pretty nice wings lol.

I wanted to say you seem to be handling all of your misfortunes well, or as well as I can tell by staring at your web page. We have had our share of trouble these few months too; son diagnosed with Autism, stupid air conditioning needing replacement in my car, husband breaking his leg, son needing a tonsil and adenoid -ectomy - man it's nice to be able to laugh at someone going through so much too!

I too have many a story of theft of personal effects. My greatest story isn't really my own, but of my high school boyfriend. He got in a fairly serious car accident during the evening of 4th of July after rolling his jeep. While he was awaiting an ambulance, someone keiped his case of cds out of the car. Can you imagine? Talk about kicking a guy while he is (literally) down!

One of mine entails of someone stealing my new stereo that was Sirius ready, one of the first to be released at the time. Note that I still had my faceplate, but they got the locked and therefore unusable stereo. So basically we were both screwed.

Amazingly around that same time my husband lost his car to theft for about a week. While he was sans car, hoofing it around by foot for some time, he had to walk to the bank one time and found some of his beloved Violent Femmes tapes crushed on the street in front of it. The worst injustice of all!

Oh, yeah, then there was the time I parked my car next to an all-night fast-food place while I saw Sugar at the Warfield (yes, again in San Francisco), only to find someone had smashed my side window and for some reason my windshield, stole my nice wool coat, my boyfriend's super nice Fog City leather coat and my souvenir Winchester Mystery House flashlight.

While we were surveying the damage, some ... um, urban outdoorsmen suggested I not keep coats in plain view of those who might just be needing some coats. And oh, could I spare them some change?

lucky you that it was minimal to replace the vent window.

when I lived in San Francisco, I kept nothing in my car - a six year old honda sedan, but one day as I left with a friend to go to a Giants game, I yell (stupidly) to a friend at the other end of the church parking lot, "I'm going to the GIANTS game"..thereby telling the neighboring apartment dwellers and street people that I would be away from my car for at least three hours.

I return to my car to find the little vent window smashed in but nothing missing. (because when the alarm went off, a friend came running out to see what was going on, and the thief disappeared). I, however, cried when I saw the broken window and my fellow-baseball-fan friend had to clean up the mess for me as I was in shock that someone would break in.

Bigger shock the next day when I find out that little ol' vent window would cost between $300 and $1000 to fix. are you freakin' kidding me???

I've since moved to the midwest and am amazed (shocked, really) at what I see in cars parked near me...wallets out, purses, ipods, laptops - the works. People lock or don't lock their cars here. ??!!

How's the post-car-break-in cleanup going?

One evening my boyfriend returned to the house he was living in as a uni student (in a very rough area of Nottingham) and discovered they had been broken into. He saw some guys hop over the fence in the garden as he arrived - so he immediately called the police.

The police turned up over an hour later and started poking around the living room saying things like: "These videos...they wouldn't be taped from the tv, would they?" and so on, drawing incredulous stares from my bf, who kept pointing out that the guys went that-a-way, but not holding out much hope.

After a half hour of veiled threats they left. A few minutes later my bf receives a call: the police found the burglars, still in the next door neighbour's garden, sitting around chatting. He got all his stuff back.

@wendyw - So true! I forgot that my owners manual was stolen as well. Can you believe that? I know everyone wants to know how to mantain and opperate a 1998 Dodge Neon. Anyhoo, to the point of your photo suggestion, contained in that owners manual were certain blackmail photos that I had from college - you know, the classic photo where you are laying on the floor in a full eagle sprawl, posed with empty bottles of JD and an American Spirit dangling from your mouth. Not to mention that my (at the time) recently received patriarical blessing was also in the pre-ransacked glovebox for some reason. Talk about a wild dichotomy of stolen booty!

Hey dude your readers are funny. I'm glad you liked the story - hope you're feeling better.

Are these kids so bored in SLC because they're not allowed to drink coffee, get drunk or have sex, that their only remaining outlet for all that normal pent-up adolescent energy is turning to a life of crime (also frowned upon by organized religions everywhere)? seriously, you just KNOW this was done by some horny, sober, caffeine-free teenager whose parents voted for Bush.

Guess you'll need to invest in some security cameras at the new house. And I'm so sorry this happened to you when you were having such a rough week already!

When I was about 13 my mom had another baby. About two weeks after my sister was born my mom received a phone call from the neighbor letting her know that someone was sitting in her car. After not sleeping for two weeks straight my mom was pissed and was going to make sure that nobody messed with her car.

My mom then woke me up to sit with the baby and I have to say it was probably one of the most terrifying moments of my life. Here I am fast asleep and my bedroom door just opens up to show my mom's silhouette. She had on a pink terry bathrobe, hair was wrapped in a pink bath towel, and a shotgun in her hand.

I go into the kitchen while my mom goes outside to scare of the guy. Two seconds later I hear a shot two more seconds later I hear another shot. Turns out my mom went out there pointed the gun at the guy and told him to get out. He got out of the car threw his hands up like he it was nothing and started walking away. Because she felt that he wasn't taking the situation very seriously she fired a shot off into the sky. Apparently the guy then started to jog. This only pissed her off more so she fired another warning shot. This time the guy took off.

At the time we lived in a part of Baltimore that was going downhill pretty fast and we had a couple of attempted break ins. Those ended after the shotgun incident.

I had a similar theft experience with my bike. The retard stole the computer part of my odometer on my bike without stealing the part off the front fork that enables the computer to calculate anything. Thus making the computer part 100% useless. I understand how anger and a desperate need for crack could inspire someone to steal things. I just can't comprehend stealing things with absolutely no value.

Yeah, I said the same thing about the choosing of the smallest window in my car the last time mine was broken into.

Then I found out that the teeny tiny window with the minimal cleanup is the MOST EXPENSIVE WINDOW IN MY ENTIRE CAR! It is about 1/10th of my windshield but costs 10% MORE.

The thoughtful thief immediately turned into the sneaky crapface thief - in my head.

Especially because he didn't even steal anything this time.

somebody broke into my car last november, but it wasn't fun or funny or anything but very. poorly. timed. not that there's ever a "good" time for these sorts of things, but there are certainly "worst" times. when this happened i'd been struggling with a horrible reaction to a medication for nine months, and my doctor had just written me a prescription for xanax to keep me from flipping out and hurting myself or someone else. so. using my father's car (mine was on a jack outside my apartment because of a flat tire), i drove to my apartment, which was in a neighborhood of fucking MANSIONS, mind, and as i walked past my car's door i noticed the glass on the ground. and then the missing window, and then the mangled stereo (i also drive a honda, so i had the same issues you had). and i couldn't care. i was going there to get some money so i could pay for my prescription for xanax, i was shaking and crying and considering hospitalization, and then i saw my window on the ground and in pieces in my passenger seat. and the mangled stereo that had no faceplate because it had been pried off. and i didn't care. that is, until i unlocked the door from the inside, set off the alarm, couldn't figure out how to turn it off for about 10 minutes, and called my family and shrieked and cried to them on the phone until they came over to drive me home.

so. for all of that, couldn't the thief have at least gotten the stereo? shouldn't it have been good for at least one of us?

not a good story, then.

I've had my stereo stolen about four times now. The last time, they just took the stereo without the face plate. There is nothing creepier to me than knowing some stranger was in your space and touching your things.

This is the unluckiest car I have ever had. It has countless dings and scrapes from people hitting it in parking lots and never bothering to leave a note. Not even just to say they were sorry. People in Seattle are rude motherfuckers.

My 1992 Nissan Sentra was broken into on the last day of my last semester of graduate school. I had left an old leather backpack inside with nothing in it except my only copies of my master's thesis, which I had (thank God) turned in to the university the day before.

I'd like to think I had a more educated car burglar than the rest of y'all. :D

oh. i forgot to note that the flaming idiot didn't even take any of the money i'd left in the car. or the cds. or any of the other things of value, which were numerous, even though i can't remember what they were.

I've never had my car broken in to, but I've had my tires slashed twice right in front of my apartment (off downtown Boise). The perp went down the block slashing the tires of all the cars on one side of the street. Why do people do this?? I'm freakish about locking my car doors, and now that I'm moving to a larger city, I'll be taking my faceplate everywhere with me, too. Does that actually help?

At least the cops didn't bring home your vibrator! That's right I said VIBRATOR. The cops brought home my stolen vibrator.

It was around Christmas and apparently someone had broken into the trunk of my junky 87 Toyota Corolla (this happened about 4 years ago by the way) and had stolen a suitcase and a purse. My name and address happened to be on the luggage tag of the suitcase and so after finding it in the Target parking lot the cops brought it to the house.

The thing is I was in a shit panic when I saw the suitcase because I knew one of the only things in there was my Vibrator! (I had put it in there to hide it from my much younger brother when I moved back home during Grad school). I just kept thinking oh my god the cops are bringing home my vibrator. My whole family was standing around and the cops -with a way too innocent look on their faces I might add- asked me to check and make sure everything was there. In terror I opened the suitcase just a fraction and without really looking shouted out that yes everything was there. I should have known better though when the younger cop grinned as he handed me my purse and told me I should check that too. In relief I opened it WIDE and then snapped it shut and looked up red faced at the cop as I squeeked out that yes everything was there too. Apparently, the thieves...or maybe the cops...had moved the vibrator and it had been staring up at me in all it's neon blue, rabbit attachment, remote controlled glory when I opened my purse.

To this day my family passes this story around- they think it's the most hysterical thing ever. I usually just blush in mortification and wonder what the faces of the thieves looked like when they opened my stuff expecting valuables and found a neon blue rabbit vibrator. I bet the cops drew straws to see who would get to show up on my doorstop with that!

A few years back, my co-worker decided to take his wife out to a nice restaurant in downtown St. Louis for their anniversary. He had the valet park his car. The catch? The restaurant didn't have valet parking. Oops! And he never saw the car again.

i had a friend who visited new orleans in her little honda civic, which was filled with every little thing she owned. she put a sign in the window that said "i can't stop you if you want to steal my stuff, but GOD WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP"

A friend of my husband is dying of cancer so she wrote her three daughters letters for all the major events in their lives that she won't be there for. She put pictures of them when they were babies.

While she was at the hospital getting treatment, someone broke into her home and stole everything including the letters with the pictures.

Now you KNOW that guy is going to rot in hell!

Here in Brooklyn, we had so many car stereos stolen that we decided to get creative. We had the stereo space in our dash replaced with a blank. From the window, it looks like we have no stereo at all. But... we had an amp installed under the seat. The amp is connected to the car's speakers & it has a "mini" output. We plug the mini cable into the headphone jack of our ipod & we have music. When we walk away from the car we always take our ipod with us & we tuck the mini cable under the seat.

When we had the whole thing hooked up at Best Buy the guy didn't think it would work. We were like, "Dude, trust us. Think about it, why wouldn't it work?" When we picked up the car an hour later he admitted, "This is so rad."

Take that thieves & high-school stereo techs at Best Buy.

Mimiingermany - ha, that happened to my old housemate too. Left his car at home when we were out one night, and came back to find the tape deck gone and the cassette which had been in it left out on the front seat. The thieves wouldn't even take an REO Speedwagon album for free.

I have another friend who got his house broken in to just after he'd bought a new widescreen TV. It wouldn't fit through the window the thieves came in through, and there was a deadbolt on the door, so they took the remote instead.

i forgot to add: the sign was 100% effective.

ugh, the same thing happened to me with the faceplate. at seminary. in the seminary campus parking lot. they tried to get in through the front door and couldn't, but messed up the doorframe trying, got in through the back door, tore down the console, took off the face plate (which does not require tearing down the console by the way) and tried to take the stereo, but failed, they forgot one screw. I had dumb thieves.

Plus, a face plate is so annoying to replace and the new one i got never fit right.

not that i'm still annoyed two years later by this incident.

Last weekend at the beach, my husband left our keys in our minivan and we had his blackberry, and all of my credit and debit cards stolen.

They did not take the portable DVD player or a book of 30 DVDs or THE CAR. They did however, take my keys and my husband's keys to his car. My only thought was that these thieves must have been really mean people to leave us with no means to get home but leave the car. Seriously.

We had a thief a few years ago who traded... he/she would break in and take something, but also leave something. Some of the trades included:

stolen change/ left air compressor
stolen lotion, tissues, cigarettes/ left "Gone with the wind" video
stolen Jam tape/ left bottle opener

Up in Vancouver, BC, Cananda (we were visiting family there) our Camry was broken into. The drivers side window was smashed. They left the stereo and every single other item in the car except my spare car keys and $5 cash.

It cost $250 to fix the window... all so they could have $5 cash.

Why do you need the car keys if you aren't going to steal the car? THAT IS JUST MEAN!

My high school boyfriend and I went to the movies one day. As we were leaving, we noticed that his parents' Mitsubishi truck was gone, with another one in its place. It had been stolen.

When it was recovered the next day, the only thing they had stolen was the battery. They did, however, take the knobs off the *factory* stereo and leave them in the ash tray. Evidently, the police told them that what they did with the knobs was the thieves' way of saying that the stereo isn't even worth dismantling. It's their way of insulting you...in addition to actually taking your vehicle, I guess!

Six years ago, we drove across the country from Denver to New York. My father-in-law had driven a U-haul containing the contents of our apartment; we took only our clothes, CDs, and things of value that we didn't want left in the unsafe U-haul.

You can see where this is going.

While we were staying in Memphis (I highly recommend Graceland and the Civil Rights Museum, by the way), our car was broken into. A cop with an almost unintellible accent (made Heather sound positively British) and the world's biggest hairlip -- I swear I am not making that up -- greeted us with the happy news.

Although the thieves left most of our clothes, food, and a few random other things, they took everything else, including...

our credit cards
my husband's guitar
over 200 CDs
the box containing every last scrap of information pertaining to our wedding (we were getting married in three months) -- every contract, every torn out magazine article on ridiculous hairstyles...
our wedding RINGS
our favorite books

A lot of that I understood. I mean, you can hawk CDs and, heck, the wedding rings should have fetched the thieves a pretty penny.

But what ticked me off were the stupid things they took.
Like the box of thank-you notes written to me by my students (I'm a teacher). Although the money and general respect that teaching brings in certainly make the profession worthwhile, those little scribbled notes are, like, essential if you want to keep on teaching. What the hell did some stupid Memphis thief need with my students' notes???

And also the Graceland souvenirs. We'd picked up oodles of Christmas presents for family and friends, and now these asshole thieves had stolen them. As if they couldn't pick up an Elvis nightlight just around the corner ANY TIME THEY WANTED TO??? They had to steal OURS???

And finally.
The bag of bags.
We'd brought our dog with us, and so we'd also brought along a plastic bag containing a bunch of OTHER plastic bags to pick up her poop.
And the thieves took the bag of bags.
The bag. Of. Bags.
We couldn't even clean up our dog's crap because of these idiots.

When I was in college I would park my car a the Park 'N Ride station and take the Light Rail the rest of the way to school in downtown Denver. I returned to my car after class to find that my window had been broken. Not broken with a rock or a stick mind you. Broken with someone's hand. Not a hand wrapped in comfy protective layers of shirts or gloves. Just a bare hand. There was blood all over the door and my seats. It actually looked quite nice on the blue leather. A sort of art project gone wrong? Anyway, they also grabbed the faceplate to my stereo and some empty CD Cases. My CD folio was still laying on the front seat untouched. Dumb Asses.

My best friend from college moved to Chicago from Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, his old, used Toyota Corolla was stolen along with his phone. The police recovered his car along with the phone a few days later. The next day my friend gets a call on his cell asking for some random guy. She says she was looking for her boyfriend and apologizes for "having the wrong number." My friend says, "Honey, your boyfried stole my car." The next day, car is gone again - never to be recovered. Moral of the story: NEVER mock a thief's girlfriend.

Many moons ago (I was 17 at the time) I had a huge crush on the father of the kids that I babysat for. His name was Bob and he drove a new Mazda Miata. Bob loved to party and would arrive home with his wife drunk many times. Even though his wife had already paid me, Bob would try to give me more money as I walked out the door. Not just a few bucks but 20 dollar bills that I would refuse (yes, I was a honest girl at one time).

Anyway...one weekend Bob headed out to party with his buddies in his new Miata. The next day his wife woke up to find Bob passed out on the couch with muddy shoes and no Mazda Miata. It turned out that Bob got smashed and smashed his Miata into a ditch. He was too scared to call his wife so he walked the three miles home in the rain.

Once the wife found out about the night before they took the kids and headed towards where he thought he left the Miata the night before. The Miata was there, but someone had taken a sledge hammer of some sort to the rear end and windows. His cell phone bag, tapes and his golf clubs were all missing.

Needless to say, the car was totalled out.
Amazingly enough, he is still alive and married.

I live in a slightly sketchy area of Kansas City, MO. (Really, most "decent" areas of KC, MO are slightly sketchy.) One morning my fiance and I went out to his car to find not one of the little back windows smashed in but BOTH. One of his back locks won't unlock when you pull on it, so they had to go around to the other side, AFTER cutting themselves and letting the blood drip all down the inside of the door.

There was nothing to steal in the car and he had his trunk latch locked, so they couldn't get into the trunk without a key. They tried to steal the car, but either got interrupted or were too stupid to actually do it. They steering column is all smashed up, and we are poor grad students so we still haven't gotten it fixed (6 months later). We just kind of smooshed it all back together so that he could get the key in the ignition.

The best part is, they snapped the end off the little slidey thing for the temperature. So now we have to pinch at this little sharp piece of plastic whenever it's too hot/cold. We would have glued the end back on, but they apparently TOOK IT.

So weird - my car just got robbed a month ago - they got in using one of those skinny slidy things you can use on older cars (90s Civic here) and tore up some of that rubbery stuff that holds the window in place? Whatever it does? And they took a bunch of mix-tape-cds, which really pisses me off, and my stereo which doesn't piss me off at all because my insurance and magic and got me a new one for double what I paid for the old one. Course now that stereo is worth more than my car but whatever.

A friend of mine got robbed in Chicago, though, and the guy took her old stereo and tried to rip her city sticker off. Failed, but he decided to take the 1/3rd of the sticker he did get off. Smarty.

Luckily, I have never had anything stolen from my car. Probably because it's the ugliest, cheapest-looking piece of crap ever made and no one even entertains the idea that there might be something of value inside.

However, many years ago, my brother had his truck broken into. Every single CD he had bought in the past ten years was in it (Why he kept that many CDs in his truck in the first place, I'll never know), and they were all stolen. And I swear to God, he cried. He cried BUCKETS. For days and days. And if I called him right now and asked him about it, I promise you that he would get all moody and quiet and say, "I don't want to talk about." and hang up.

He really liked those CDs.

My car was stolen in broad daylight, in Hollywood, right off a main street while I was in a therapy appointment trying to deal with a recent assault during an attempted robbery.

I walked out and right where I was sure I left my car was an empty space. No broken glass. No trace of my car. Just a big empty space.

I sat there for 10 minutes staring at the empty space before I walked back to my therapists office to call for help. I told the receptionist who told the therapist and my therapist came out to walk me back downstairs to wait for the police. My primary thought and fear all the way back down the stairs wasn't that my car was missing or had been stolen or about the Christmas presents I'd just bought and stashed in the trunk (that I was never reimbursed for - those would only have been covered with Homeowners Insurance, not car insurance even though they were stolen from my car, not my home) it was the fear we'd get back to where the empty space had been and my car would suddenly be there - having never been stolen at all.

Fortunately, well, in a way, the car was still "gone" and my therapist could only feel pity that someone who had recently been assaulted during a robbery now had her car (and recently purchased Christmas presents) stolen in yet another robbery.

I live in a niceish neighborhood on the east bench of Salt Lake. I've lived here almost all of my life, and at least as long as I've been driving, and so I'd never been in the practice of locking my doors (or even rolling up my windows) until recently. I'd never had anything happen until last fall, when I left my extremely beat up '97 Subaru wagon on the street over night and didn't lock up. I figured that since we live directly across from a ward, people thinking about breaking in would think twice and fear the wrath of God who I've heard does not like thieves. I was wrong. The weird thing is, whoever broke in didn't take anything good (radio, iPod, headphones) but they did take all the paper out of my glove compartment. And a toothbrush. And they left the door ajar.

Not long after my husband and I moved into our current house, someone stole the stereo out of his truck (breaking in would have required that the doors have been locked), right in our driveway (several vehicles in the neighborhood got hit).

The really sad part? It is a 96 Chevy and the stereo was put in that same year.

After I got over being all pissed and indignant, I kinda felt sorry for the person(s) that would go through the trouble of stealing a decade old stereo. Hell, you probably couldn't have eBay'ed it for shipping, especially since the display no longer worked.

I haven't had my stereo stolen out of my car but I can understand the feeling of being taken advantage of by thieves. Over Christmas we went to visit my in-laws in Houston and after we had returned home we realized that while my luggage was at the airport someone decided they needed some new underwear,,, and took all of mine out of my bag. Nothing else was taken. Some airport worker is walking around in my best undies. All with me now,,, eeeeewwwwwwww!

I'm sorry your car got broken into Heather, I know how much that sucks, I had my car stolen twice 8 years ago (it was a 1978 Honda and very easy to break into apparently), well the first time the car was recovered the next day and the little boogers had trashed it inside and out, it was in the shop for two weeks getting repaired, at least they didn't wreck the engine which I had been diligently running in after it got new rings. They took my gym gear though, and yes I had just worked out in it, and my contact lens case, without my lenses thankfully, left behind the sweater I had knit myself, guess they didn't like it, well I do, I still have it. So I went out and got a steering wheel lock after that, but didn't put it on one night at work, and yep it got stolen again, but this time the only thing they took was the wheel lock, probably because I had stopped keeping anything else in my car. Not that it would have been any use to them, I had the keys.

Wow - nothing makes you want to break your foot off in someone's ass than when they steal something you need that can't help them.

When I was living in LA, I had my car stolen, got mugged, and had someone try to break into a beach house we were renting on Christmas Eve. Those last two things actually turned out to be gifts of sorts:

http://annenahm.com/?p=282

But while I can get behind the spiritual oneness with the universe re: mugging by knifepoint? I'm still pissed about the car theft.

Don't you miss LA?

Back in 1992 I bought my first car, a 1987 Ford Escort which was a piece of junk and was stollen one weekend when I was visiting my boyfriend. It was replaced in early 1993 with a Toyota Tercel which my friend promptly named "Constance" for the constipated-shit-brown color. I loved that car.

It only had a radio in it, but it did have a cup holder, which I loved. And after driving the car cross-country and watching it roll over to 100,000 miles in 1995 someone tried to break in and steal the radio. Except they were incompetent and were unable to get it out (not that it would have been worth, oh, ANYTHING). So I came back to my car and discover they had jimmied the door and they had taken nothing except they had slammed my radio so hard that it no longer worked.

Frickin' morons.

Here in NYC a junkie or crack head smashed my friend's car window and stole her 12 year old daughters school book bag.
Child could not be happier parent, the parent NOT happy!
Parent had to pay the school for the stolen textbooks and find a classmates notebook to photo copy the whole terms school notes.

Living in Boise, Idaho you can get away with leaving your car doors unlocked once in a while. But living in the north end of town, is a different story. Really nice neighborhood, but lately it's been a hot zone for bored teenagers on weekend nights. I was coming back from a Cinco de Mayo party at a friends house early Sunday morning. I had an armful of bowls and a bottle of tequila I was taking back to the house. I must've left the door unlocked because the next morning my case of 50 cd's, my nice Bose in ear headphones and a half bag of tostito's tortilla chips that I forgot to grab were stolen. I had a nice red leather fossil briefcase and a cute pair of calvin klein shoes in the back seat that were left untouched. So it was either a band of yound boys with no girlfriends or a chick with no fashion sense.

The most bizarre thief I've encountered stole my Metro SmartTrip card with about ten dollars in value on it and about a hundred dollars in cash from my wallet -- leaving the credit cards, electronic identification cards for a secure securities facility, digital camera, iPod, and other highly visible valuables. This was at a small party several years ago, and I've never been able to find out who actually stole my stuff, but I'm happy that he or she left my ID cards for work.

I feel for you Heather. My husband's wallet was stolen out of his unlocked car on Saturday night. Worst part...I was asleep/passed out from one too many martinis not 10 feet away, but never woke up. The stupid thieves were so confounded by the lock on his attache case (factory preset 000 was never changed) that they decided to smash it open. The grand haul...$72 dollars and 30 minutes of cancelling credit cards and debit cards (and one ugly attache case that I'm happy was destroyed).

The friendly police officer who took our report actually advised that we walk around the block because usually the thieves only take the cash and throw away the rest of the wallet. If they're going to do that, couldn't they at least throw it in our yard? They left the smashed attache case in the car. If they're trying to steal my husband's identity they're welcome to it bad credit and all!

I am just lucky that I rolled up my windows and locked my doors that night since I often don't and leave my purse and Ipod in full view. We've lived in the same place for 9 years and never had a problem. I'm fanatical about locking my car doors now though in addition to bringing my purse and Ipod in every night.

My husband left his keys in his truck overnight on a regular basis. After much screaming and warning that it would get stolen one day, I gave up. He went to go to work one morning, and found that all the change he kept inside the change holder was all over the front seat. Then he noticed that it was just the pennies that were left. The thief had sifted through handsful of change to get everything but the pennies, and left the car keys. I love Utah!

I had my home broken into on January 3rd, 2005. I walked into the house and noticed the blinds over the back door were flapping in the breeze. The back door had been torn up and the glass removed.

Then I noticed one of my suits on the dinning room floor. I then figured out I had been robbed. I went around the house to find every drawer opened, tv's missing, checkbook and credit cards gone, laptop gone, external hard drive missing, but the cable was still there. He had stolen all of my suits, don't get this, we were not the same size.

I then went down stairs to find my 36 in tv face down on the floor. I am assuming the idiot tried to lift it by himself and it wound up falling to the ground. All of the electronics were unplugged and off to the side. Then I realized, that they could still be there, so I quickly got out of there and called the police from the driveway.

I found a package had been delivered to my house. I assume the delivery driver rang the door bell and frightened off the thief.

Two weeks later, as I was getting the house alarm installed, I caught the thief breaking into the neighbors house with a cop writing a ticket to someone less than 100 yards away. Not that bright. He did two years.

The worse news out of all of this, he lives in the home behind me. Or should I say he lives off the person living in the house behind me. He is back after getting out of prison.

Sorry about losing your iPod.

That blows your radio got stolen. The last time i was moving we has left all the computer stuff out so that they we're the last things to take. but not everything fit into one box so we split them up into two. But nothing matched so computer cords were in a box with the printer and vis verse. Well so someone decided to snag a box while we weren't looking ( ok so we stopped to drink a few beers). While the moron got our printer they had none of the cords. kind of hard to sell it at the swap meet when you cant prove it works.

when i was in college i had my 2-door hatchback honda civic broken into at my seemingly secure building in an ok area of LA.

i had been living there for over 6 months when i realized the building was no longer as secure or family friendly as it was when i had moved in. but i failed to move out in time.

so the morning before my mom arrives from argentina to see where her only daughter lives while going to college in a very strange and different country, i go down to my car to find both door locks broken (the douchebag thief in this case could not get into my car by destroying one lock so he went to the other one as well) and the dashboard completely ripped apart because the a-hole wanted to get the stereo. i had to replace the whole thing. i also had to replace one of the doors but that was just icing on the cake.

but the thing that disturbed me the most is that he even found and took my teaser gun.

Remember those from the early 90s? they would shock a person with minor electricity when touched and they sold them at the mall. i don't think they sell them anymore, not sure if that's a good or bad thing...

what disturbed me about it was that i started thinking that it would suck even more if after getting it stolen the douchebag thief who lived in my building would use it to attack me with it. how ironic would that have been?

i didn't stay long to find out. i think i was out a month later.

and it was really amusing (in a non-funny way, of course) for my mom to see that i had to go into the car through the trunk to open the door for her.
real classy.

A few years ago we had a similar thing happen when a thief stole our portable CD player. (This was in a time before we had all of the small cute things in our life--children and iPods). He or she tossed everything around in the car which increased the sense of violation when we discovered it all the next morning.

Now however we have children to toss everything around in the car. The upside to this though is that if someone tried to steal something again they’d be knocked out by the smell of the Scooby shake that leaked under the seat a year ago. It can’t be fully cleaned which means the spill has grown, molted and learned to shave. It really smells very very bad. In fact, it is this zone of funk that protects the car from theft. To get in to steal anything you’d have to wear a hazmat suit and that would make you conspicuous as you came lumbering down our street. Plus, those suits don’t really have pockets which means you’d have to carry everything you took in those oven-mitt like hand protectors and let me tell you an iPod is very difficult to operate when wearing those things. You end up completely unable to operate the wheel. You are only able to play your songs in alphabetical succession which leaves you at the mercy of the first thing on your playlist. If you are a parent your playlist might include kid songs which means you’re constantly having to listen to “ABC Learning Happy Song” which has been known to cause urban rampages and increased car thefts in Utah. I only know about this hazmat iPod problem because wearing the outfit is the only way I can tolerate the stench driving the kids to school in the morning. The kids wear the suits too. Hannah Anderson makes a lovely matching family set. The only downside is it’s also hard to eat a Scooby shake. We all keep spilling them.

when i was in la a few years back for work, i had a rental car broken into. they left my purse and wallet but took everything of value including passport, social security card, drivers license, credit cards, travel money, return ticket home, etc. so in the morning i stop to get some coffee at starbucks and try to pay for some joe before i realize i've been robbed. i'm standing at the counter holding my wallet in a stuppor repeating "wait where's my cash?! where's my credit card??!! i've been robbed, i've been robbed!" you know who cared?! NO ONE! starbucks wouldn't even let me use their phone to call the police (in the olden days before cell phones). this was prior to 9/11 so i was allowed on my flight home with no photo id or ticket. and i'm pretty sure someone who works security for the hotel parking garage did the thiefing. they wrote 2 $600+ checks, one for electronics @ best buy and one for home depot.

This sparked a memorable moment when I parked next to my local high school where I was taking night courses. I must've forgotten something in the car, so when I returned I found some kids leaning on it smokin` & tokin`. I asked that they remove there butts and, after class that night, I discovered my side window bashed in. Nothing was stolen. The car had the cheap manufacturers 'radio'. I did misplace my DAMNATION AND A DAY CD (by Cradle of filth). I asked several women whom tolerated my company enough to sit in the passenger seat while driving aroun L.A. if they'd seen (took) it. The gets me is that was an import which I can't easily replace even through iTunes.

My friend was VERY offended when her car was broken into and the thief stole her husband's CDs, but none of her own. She felt very snubbed.

Thieves are so inconsiderate.

Alas, I have a few stories to share:

1. Columbus, Ohio. Theives tried to steal our large potted plants. We had bought very large and heavy pots to discourage this. Alas, they dragged the 6 foot tall PLANTS and some dirt across the parking lot (and I assume into a car, as the dirt tracks stopped). They obviously couldn't move the pots with the plants *in* them. They took the broom we had outside, too. Probably needed it to clean up. They also broke into my (then new) 1993 Honda Civic Hatchback. Broke the window, took my $30 boom box (I didn't have a stereo yet) but left my cassette tapes. They obvoously needed something to play their tapes while they repotted the plants.

2. Oakland, CA. Yes, people say we are lucky that it's just property crime and not gunshot wounds, but here you go:

Two years ago, my gf's 1994 Del Sol gets broken into in a very nice neighborhood (Montclair). They somehow carefully opened the manual lock and took her stereo faceplate, then closed up the car. She still has no stereo.

Which brings us to:

3. Oakland, CA, take II. A few weeks ago, that same car was locked, with a club on the wheel, parked directly outside of our house (about 10 feet from the front door). Someone smashed the triangle window, and searched through the car. They got her out-of-sight iPod she'd forgotten to bring in and the car's title (she'd just gotten it replaced and it was still in the car).

Because this is not Utah, the cops declined to come out and take a report. They said if we really wanted to report it we could go online, print out a form and snail mail it in. We did. But still--breaking into a car is a friggin' felony. You'd think they might want to take a look, lift a few fingerprints to compare with their Big File of Car Theif Prints or something.

When we told our neighbor down the street about our misfortune, she said she, her oldest son and husband were watching TV when they saw their younger son drive off. She asked her older son, "hey where is your brother going?" and he didn't know, so they figured he was just running out for gas or something. Alas, he walked into the room not more than 2 minutes later. Yes, they'd sat on the couch, looked out the front window, and watched someone drive the son's car away.

My aunt kept having her car stolen (in Jersey). She always knew that it'd been found when the cops came to the door. Typically she was suprised at how far it made it. (One time it had just been stolen and was in the shop getting repaired when someone stole it from the shop.)

There should be some honor amongst thieves. When my car was broken into they went in through the back, shattered the glass in all the back windows. Apparently they did this so they could sit in the front seat in relative comfort, with no glass cutting their tush. What they could not have known was at the time I was a nanny. I picked two little boys up from school every day. Of course, I could not do this with broken windows and glass, and their parents had to scramble. It was a scary and frustrating experience-- to think that in the night someone was sitting in MY driveway, touching MY stuff. Yack.

So, I have lurked on your site for a while but this post makes me want to share in the misery. I had my car broken into in Vancouver (the car crime capital of Canada!) but the car alarm and lack of anything in it scared off the thief. The fact that my boyfriend (now my ex) stayed in bed while I went to check is quite irrelevant.

A far better story is about my good friend who also lives in Vancouver but in the gaybourhood, not the burbs. He had some guy break into his car and try to start it with a screwdriver. But my friend hadn't driven that car for a year so the battery was dead. So the guy stole the faceplate instead. Then a homeless person decided to take up residence in the backseat of his car.

So, it's a good thing that you live in Utah and not the gaybourhood of Vancouver!

I knew this guy in high school, his parents had this yellow Mercedes (as well as a couple of other less snooty cars). I thought they drove the Mercedes everywhere because they were showing off. Nope. They were trying to get it stolen. No one would take it. It was (if I remember correctly) an 350 Diesel. A diesel Mercedes (that much I remember quite clearly)- totally a contradiction if there ever was one. They got it supposedly because you get such great gas mileage with diesel. Well they hated it, and started leaving it outside unlocked....with the keys in it...with some cash on the dashboard. Hell, I think they even put a couple of bottles of Colt 45 on the passenger seat at one time. No one ever took that car.

Some thief was totally missing out on that car. It was loaded beyond belief, and with the gas mileage on that thing, they could have starred in the world's longest police chase.

Two summers ago I was volunteering (i.e. working for free) at a shelter for homeless and runaway teens teaching them about their legal rights. After a class one Friday afternoon, I walked out to the parking lot to find my car missing. I asked the guard, whose job it is to guard the parking lot, where my car was, and she said, "Oh, two boys drove off in it." After thanking her profusely for taking her job so seriously, I called the police, made the report and patiently waited three days before they recovered my car. Nothing was broken, no parts had been sold, and almost nothing had been stolen. In fact, they left me several gifts. In the backseat of my car I found a curling iron, two bowling balls, handcuffs, numerous bottles of lubricant and three used condoms. I still wander what role the curling iron and bowling balls played. Oh, and the one thing that they did steal from my car...my Nora Roberts romance novel on tape. They left all of my CD's, my leather bag, and even some cash, but apparently Nora Roberts was just too tantalizing to leave behind.

Heather, I empathize with you so much that I just admitted to listening to Nora Roberts books.

Wow, the car thieves in Salt Lake, and most of your commenters' locales, clearly need to be schooled by the pros who stole my little brother's car. He drove a riced-out Acura Integra Type-R with about $10,000 worth of ridiculous upgrades (custom exhaust & suspension, spoon wheels, racing clutch, cold air intake, et fricking cetera), and it was stolen from the parking lot of his apartment complex while he slept.

The car was recovered on a downtown street a week later, completely stripped. When I say "stripped," I mean that the car had no ENGINE or HOOD or WASHER FLUID CONTAINER or GAS TANK or INTERIOR. It was literally a shell, except that the thieves had swapped out my brother's suspension, tires and rims for the factory equipment so that they could roll it onto the street and leave it. The police told my brother he needed to get it off the street ASAP or receive a ticket, so he called a tow truck company and told them to meet him at the car's location.

My brother sat despondent, waiting for the tow truck in my mother's borrowed Accord, when a carjacker approached the driver's window, pointed a gun at my brother, and told him to get out. My brother was so exasperated at this point that he told the carjacker "you better fucking shoot me then, and you better fucking kill me when you do, because I am not giving you this car, and the police are on their way here already." The man lowered the gun and ran off into the night.

Then the tow truck driver arrived and refused to tow the car because the suspension was not bolted on and he deemed it unsafe. My brother had to call another towing company, with a flatbed.

A friend once had his small Mazda stolen in Fairbanks, Alaska. They burnt cigarette holes all over the upholstry, tore out the $2000 sound system, took it off-roading, and strapped a ton of lumber to the roof. Of his Mazda. He had the OnStar enabled so they could track it down, but when they finally found the car it was completely totalled.

I've never had a car stolen before, but I think it's even more insulting when someone steals your bicycle. A friend of mine once left his bike outside my dorm, "just for a moment," and when he came back it was of course gone. The best part was, the thief left his own run-down bicycle on the stand (taking the lock). My friend had to try very hard to see the bright side of this this, since it was entirely his fault.

Many years ago when I lived in what is now a posh neighborhood in Vancouver I came home to find my two kittens locked in the bathroom. Odd I thought, then noticed one of the tiny little windows I had was open and propped next to where it should be closed. I looked around and realised that someone had broken in and stole our VCR, which was a paint spattered half broken piece of crap anyhow. I freaked out. A officer on a bicycle(how very Vancouver!) came and basically was like "yeah that sucks" three hours later I went to get my camera out of the camera bag..only to remember that I had left my camera on the desk. It was gone along with the beautiful zoom lens on it.
The next day I was sleeping in and heard the door open, the chain pull and realised that: the thief had the key! I hadn't even thought about the fact that A: the window was about 10"x8" and that the door had been locked when I got home. I moved out that day.
I did think it was nice that the thief locked my kittens in the bathroom so they wouldn't escape.

With cars I've had 5 break ins. Including one where they took the 5 burned cds but not the 2 grand worth of speakers or the power tools. Another time they took all the change in the cup holder but not the wallet with 75 bucks in it that my ex forgot to take out of glove compartment.

Last year I was picking up my kids from preschool and heading straight out of town from there. I was preoccupied with getting their gear into my hatchback when my daughter said, "Mama, what is that glass all over?" and I looked around and saw my smashed passenger window. The f-ers stole my purse (not my stereo or ipod, luckily), leaving me peniless and without ID for our road trip, and almost one year to the day later, I'm still dealing with the resultant identity theft.

I hope Leta wasn't too traumatized by seeing the damage. My daughter is still worried about the "bad guys" who did that to us.

Guess I've been lucky over the years. Recently moved into a gated community and it was there that my unlocked car was rifled - everyone had told me, "hey, we're safe here, no need to lock your car - leave your purse there." Not THAT dumb.

You never know though and I like to believe in human kindness.

Some years ago, at the end of a debauched week in Key West, I looked for my return air ticket and it was nowhere to be found. I asked at the United counter in the Miami airport if they had a lost and found, and they laughed at me - said I was looking at paying $800 to fly home, but lo and behold, my ticket was in the lost and found.

I had the grill stolen off the front of my 1989 Volkswagen Golf when we lived in an apartment complex in Cary, NC. The police didn't even want to fill out a police report because it was so odd. I guess the guys living in the next apartment complex over needed parts for their VW.

I also had all my sporting equipment stolen from my car when I was in college and had to carry it around with me. They got 2 tennis rackets, a set of new ladies golf clubs, my racqetball racket and various paraphenalia to go with the equipment. Turns out they sold it all to Play it Again sports, who refused to tell me or the police who bought it, despite being able to describe all the items on the phone prior to coming in the store, then rooting through the racks and finding my racquetball racket with the faded spot in the shape of an armadillo sticker that I could not possibly have fabricated. I know for almost a fact it was my lying neighbor who got away with it, but justice was served when the police kicked his door in a few weeks later at 3am for other reasons.

My husband was genius enough to intall a new CD player in his car in the parking lot of his (Section 8) apartment when he was a poor college student. Not surprisingly, all the attention he garnered while doing the install resulted in a short lived stereo for him, and a very merry weekend for someone else, who also stole all 75 Christian CDs he had in the car. The kicker: they pried his glove box open to check in there, damaging it pretty badly- all the while it did NOT even have a locking mechanism, just one of those little buttons you turn to open. I think that was what made him the maddest was the rudeness of prying the glovebox unnecessarily.

So, we too feel your pain.

Once when I was about 16 or 17, my father had taken home a brand new, high performance Volvo for the evening (he worked at the Big 3, the car was for Big 3 testing purposes). He let me take the car to the 7-11 late that night to buy a Big Gulp and some milk. I parked the car, got out and walked to the back of the store - when I returned to the front of the store I'd noticed the car was gone.

Freaked that I'd finally receive that lethal ass-kicking my father had been talking about for years, and that he'd lose his job for getting a 2-day old test car stolen, I dropped the stuff I was carrying and sprinted out into the parking lot, in the hopes of at least telling the police which direction the car was headed.

At that point I'd noticed the car was in fact still in the parking lot, about 30 feet directly backwards from where I'd parked it. Turned out I'd forgotten to set the parking brake on this manual transmission car, and it started rolling out of view immediately after I got out.

Thankfully it decided to stop before it rolled into traffic; if that'd happened, I'm pretty sure I'd be about 20 years into my big dirt nap.

when i lived in Philadelphia,i didn't have a car... but someone tried to mug me once. I didn't have any money, and the mugger spared my life. but he punched me in the nose as a lesson. always carry money.

During the never-ending reconstruction of our house, when Scott and I were still living at my father's, someone broke into our home and stole one of the few items that was spared, our t.v. set. Our television. The only one, with the nice flat screen. Nay our very souls.

If you want to unleash my inner redneck, fuck with my sources of entertainment. I will put on a wife-beater and start setting booby traps.

I love the stupid questions people ask you when something gets stolen. I lost a wallet once... I called the bagel store I'd just been at to see if I had accidentally left it on the counter. The woman working there says, "Well, you shouldn't have put it down!! If you put it down, someone else could have picked it up and left with it!!" Yeah, thanks a lot, Sherlock.

Also, my grandma once had her car stolen. Out of her own driveway. It was the only time she'd ever owned a really nice car. And they stole it. From an old lady. From her driveway!

I once dated someone who lived in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. Now, any San Franciscan can attest to the fact that the area, while sketchy, is not big on the physical violence towards non-participants in the crack lifestyle. One day, I discovered that someone broke into the car I parked right in the juiciest crack trade area, and stole my leather jacket. Nothing else. Just the jacket.

This caused me much annoyance, because they broke a large window that (on an old, out of production Volvo) cost a trillion dollars to repair. Fine.

I tell this annoying fact to anyone who will listen on the block (some of whom I sort of know by this point). A week later I mysteriously get my jacket back.

Reason 1 why I love this city.

When I was 19 I took my '85 Honda CRX to the dealership my dad worked at for some repairs. When I came to pick it up I noticed they had left the windows down. I got in only to find that the stereo and CD changer my dad had given me for graduation had been stolen along with about 20 CDs. The shop at first claimed that the thief must have rolled the windows down...

Not too long before this happened I had my car there because I had driven it into a flood (water half-way up my seats!). The first time I tried to pick it up I had to leave it because they left the windows down and it had rained! The second time I went back to pick it up the engine caught on fire because they hadn't cleaned the debris out of it. Needless to say I no longer go there for car repairs!

My sister and I shared an old, beat up, falling apart 1990 Cutless Sierra Oldsmobile during highschool in the late 90's. In 2002 my sister started student teaching through the ED program at UOP in Stockton, CA and decided that she needed a car to get to and from her teaching job, and even though the Oldsmobile was UGLY, it was still kicking and she was a poor college student, so she had no choice but to take it.
After parking the car on campus near her dorm late one night (probably close to 11p), she locked the doors and luckily had nothing but some cassettes(yes, no cd player in that car) inside. My parents, who are the registered owners, received a call at 4am from the Manteca police saying they had recovered the Oldsmobile on the side of the road. It had a broken passenger window and was out of gas.
The stupid car thiefs had apparently taken the car, the police think they needed a "get-a-way car" for something, but because the damn car was so old and falling apart they had no clue that the car was out of gas. See, back in 1999 the gas gauge stopped working and stayed stuck in the FULL position no matter how much or how little gas you had in the tank. You had to count the mileage to figure out your gas level. My sister had planned to fill it up in Stockton the next morning.
Too funny, the thieves thought they were home free with a car and a full tank of gas until it just puttered out on the side of the road.
I laugh at this now, but at the time my sister and I would have preferred the car stay stolen so we could have collected the tiny bit of insurance money on it and put that towards a decent looking car. :-p

tis the season...some assholes broke into our house in broad daylight last week (got a boost up to the balcony, climbed onto the roof, cut the screen and came in), and stole the laptop, my voice recorder, my sister's video camera, and my mother-in-law's cash. The thing that sucks the most is that most of our pics and videos of our little darling from this year were on the laptop, and are therefore gone. I try to console myself by thinking that in the 19th century you maybe got one picture taken a year, if that. what makes me angry is, the computer is password protected and my husband is a maniac about weird passwords, so it's highly unlikely they'll EVER be able to break into the computer. "They should just bring it back!" says my husband. "I'll write them a check!" No kidding. Now we're all stuck with the damn desktop, and one computer per household is no fun!

My truck was once robbed. They didn't break in but rather picked the locks. Mine was only one for over 60 vehicles robbed in our small town. I think they pretty much went through every street in town. 4 boys and 2 girls, split into teams, boys and girls, like a little robbing competition. From my car they took; hair scrunchies (yes it was in the... never mind)a cheap necklace, (they left the 18k gold bracelet though), 2 stuffed elephants, all my cassette tapes (bet they weren't happen when they realizes they were country, and a jacket. They left? That bracelet, a gun, and 3 hunting/survival knives, and the stereo.
Guess who hit my street?

Two Christmases ago, my friend Melissa had extended family from out of town staying with her for the holiday. Soon after the big family dinner, one of her cousins decided to drive back to D.C.

Even though her car was parked out in front of the house, someone had the balls to break into it during Christmas dinner. The radio was taken along with the 6-CD changer and 5 out of the 6 CDs.

Apparently, the thief didn't think too much of the Dixie Chicks.

I had my car broken into only once. The thief stole my CDs and the Complete Works of Shakespeare... yeah. We also had a small child break into our car. He drank a hot can of coke, then turned all the knobs up on everything. Fun times.

After a day at the beach I returned to my car on Pacific Coast Hwy only to find my underwear hanging on the antennae. I thought it pretty odd and quickly found out that the thief stole my backpack and all the stuff in it. Nice of him to display my panties!

I once went to Meijer with a friend of mine after begging him to come with me because it was late and I'm a wimp.

We came out of there at about 1am to find his backpack stolen from my backseat. He hadn't locked his door of my cheap little Toyota. All of his college science textbooks were in there (big $$$ for selling them back to the bookstore), as well as his cell phone. They didn't touch my portable CD player...

I felt really bad for having him come with me.

My family and I moved to Utah in January for a new job. The second night we were here, someone first tried to jimmy open the rear sliding windows of my truck and when that didn't work, they broke one of the windows. Same story as others, there was nothing to steal in the truck...I had a stock 1996 cassette deck.

I had been surprised that it only took two days, but after reading this site, I am no longer surprised.

Delurking because i just HAD to share this story!My uncle had been on holiday at a very rural spot in Africa over Christmas and stopped at a supermarket (in a bad town) on his trip home to get some snacks for the trip.While shopping theives stole his entire trailer off of the car making off with a trailer full of stuff including christmas gifts (such as a new laptop for their daughter).Can you imagine someone stealing a whole trailer off the car?

It gets better as when they finally finished their 12 hour plus trip home they discovered their house had also been broken into with heirloom jewellery etc all stolen.
A very expensive holiday!!!

The funniest part was that they had been on holiday with my parents who had been discussing emigrating to join us (we emigrated 6 years ago) in a different country and my parents had said the crime was getting out of hand.My uncle had told them he believed they were blowing the crime situation out of proportion to excuse the fact they wanted to leave their birth country....then this happens just after that discussion!

A few years ago my husband had all the tools stolen out of the back of his truck in our driveway. Everything he needed to make a living. The thief made it around the corner before running a red light and being smashed by a semi. The guy lived and went to jail. We still lost everything because they were destroyed in the crash. Karma is a bitch, but she can be a pretty damn amusing bitch.

I've been lucky so far in life but a friend from college asked that I share his story:

A few years ago, a friend of mine was working a lame job at the mall, hoping to make ends meet. He lived in a pretty unspectacular part of North Miami but the apartment building he lived in was safe and relatively clean. To even things out, the brakes on his car were getting increasingly worse as he tried to save up the money to fix them. Ultimately the brakes started give out on him one night as he drove home from work so he let the car kinda cruise into his parking spot and cleaned out all of his belongings, unsure of how long it would be before he could get the car fixed.

One night, I was driving him home from work. As we approached his street, we noticed that the street was blocked with emergency vehicles. We went past it, through the neighborhood, and proceeded to his apartment. As I pulled into his parking lot, he started yelling that his car was gone. We called the police to tell them that the car was gone. As we stood outside, waiting for the police to arrive, we noticed that the emergency vehicles were surrounding his car at the end of the street. Two thieves had broken into the car and made it all the way to the end of the street before the brakes gave out and they wrapped around it around a telephone pole. Both guys were relatively fine and arrested at the scene.

When he went after the insurance company to pay for the car, their response was that the car was without brakes and therefore not in working order. They would not pay damages on a car that "didn't work".

Later on that evening when I went to leave his apartment, I walked down to the same parking lot to discover my own car was missing. I called the tow company that had signs all around the guest spots. When the guy said they had my car, I replied, "Thank God." He said he'd never had anyone happy to hear their car had been towed.

As the weather warms up, so do the neighborhood car thieves.

A few summers ago, I was still driving our 64 1/2 Mustang every day, and parking it on the street behind our place at night. We knew that people were messing with the car--one morning I came out and found a pair of Channelocks and a slotted screwdriver on the fender beside the wide open hood. (I still have both--good tools, better than the crap we buy.) After a weekend away, we came back to discover the car was GONE.

That Friday night, a neighbor had called the cops as he witnessed two guys "working" on the car. They had broken out the rear "shark fin" window, and attempted to hot wire the car by connecting the brand-new battery to the windshield wiper motor.

Our roommate had the car towed to our regular shop. The wiper motor--one of the few working two-speed ones of that vintage I've ever seen--was never the same, and had to be replaced soon thereafter with a single-speed model. For a couple of years, I left a note card on the dashboard:

"If you require assistance hot-wiring this car, please call xxx-xxxx. Thank you."

Nobody ever messed with it again.

My losing-my-car-stereo-in-broad-daylight-while-our-office-building-security-guard-watched story isn't anything new, so I'll tell a couple that happened to others in my life.

One, our receptionist's husband got a top-of-the-line stereo installed in his newly pimped-out truck at a local stereo shop. Three days later, he came out in the morning to find the stereo gone, the screws lined up neatly on the driver's side floor. There was no sign of a break-in. Clearly what had happened was the stereo place had made a copy of his key when the truck was in for installation, and then they came back in the middle of the night (since they had his address on file) and de-installed the stereo for resale.

Two, many years ago my former boss had a very rare Mercedes, a model that only a few dozen had been sold in the U.S. He went away for vacation and came home to find it missing from his garage. The thieves had somehow managed not only to get into his garage and get the car, but they had to move the two cars that were parked in the driveway out of the way in order to do it. The FBI got involved in that one -- turns out a ring had gone around and retrieved every single one of the cars of that model year in the U.S. and shipped them overseas. He never got his back.

Once, my car was broken into while parked in the alley behind my shared apartment and they took everything except one thing: the little framed picture I had cross-stitched that said "This house protected by killer dust bunnies".

I accidentaly left that in the car, after having just picked it up at the frame shop on my way home from work the nite before.

Now, what was nice was, though every square inch of that 86 Nissan Sentra 5 speed had been trashed (all windows broken, stereo and speakers ripped out, seats slashed, all tapes taken, a fire started and then stomped out, on the carpet on the passenger side floor, etc) my little framed picture was placed carefully on the driver's seat, propped upright, so it was the first thing you saw. It was not even scratched.

Not even a fingerprint. They checked.

They must have made a silent agreement, between pulls on the crack pipe, to care for this one thing, because their mamas were crafters like me.

Heather,

Be careful this isn't an elaborate ploy to rationalize an opening day iPhone purchase!

I moved into my grandparents home after it was vacant for 5 years and everyone had passed away. It was a new town, a new job, and a house full of 100 years of family junk. I decided to "do the right thing" and put things on the curb for free. I made a nice large wooden sign saying "FREE" which I nailed with 3 nails to an old maple tree. I started to load up the curb with an impressive collection of 4-legged canes, walkers, shower seats, end tables, ancient tupperware and a 600 year old Hoover. From inside I see a beat up old station wagon stop and start loading. Instead of staring, I was polite and gathered more items for the free for all happening outside. When I got back out, every damn thing was gone. Including my f'n for free sign. They stole the sign.

The best thing I never had stolen was, a check for 3,000 dollars. This was for expenses incurred in the week following our house burning to the GROUND, in Feb of 2001. By to the ground I mean, small bits of the outer walls tilted and teetered in the ashes, supported by the blowing snowstorm. After being told a check was being issued for clothing, toothbrushes, and hotel bills, it never arrived. How surprised were we when we noticed, while tearfully viewing the remains of our home, a white envelope fluttering out of the burned out remains of our mailbox, still attatched to a caved in wall? Yea, like I expected to GET MAIL there. I guess a thief wouldn't either.

My last car looked fairly nice but was actually a piece of crap - I sort of wanted someone to steal it. I never locked the doors because the CD player didn't work and I never left anything of value in it. So I get ready to leave for work one morning and I notice that the ashtray, which I kept spare change in, was gone. I didn't care about the change, it was a couple of dollars at most, but did they have to take the whole ashtray and make the car look that much worse? Idiots.

Aw man,I'm sorry. Now there is some thief out there molesting your muscial choices. I hope he/she at least listened to it.

We've never had our car broken into - thank heavens - but keeping with the transportation theme, someone did steal both my bike seat and post. Now, this is nastier than it sounds because I had a special "V"-shaped seat just for women that I adored (if the thief was male, may his more sensitive bits get caught and strangled) and my kind and gentle husband gave me his post because it was better than mine and he wanted me to be comfortable.

The nice part of it all was the trip home. My kind and gentle husband took the post and seat off his bike and put it on mine so I didn't have to stand all the way. This did mean, however, that he did.

Of course, he did tend to encourage me to pedal faster, darling, faster, because we had a few miles to go!

i am a bit forgetful. i live in los angeles. therefore, i oftentimes forget to lock my car. in los angeles. and nothing's ever been stolen (knock wood). good thing ya'll moved to utah. where its all safe and stuff.

5 years ago my husband and I were living in the Philadelphia G-H-E-T-T-O and his '87 Accord got broken into. They took the stearing wheel. Yep. We were told people steal them because they're after the air bag. (I guess there's money to be made there.) A-HOLES, THERE WERE NO AIRBAGS IN CARS IN 1987! At least not in our little beater.

Sucky, sucky people!

I once had my car break down. I left it at a fully lit 24 hr gas station and it was broken into. They broke the window and got their hands cut to hell trying to steal the stereo. Funny none of the employees saw anything...

I had a car stolen once, but that's not nearly as interesting as the time my car was NOT stolen.

My ex and I went to a concert where we parked in a big parking structure. We'd been there many times and were very familiar with the layout of the place. The time before this, we'd been ushered into VIP parking for no discernible reason, so when we had to drive up one level and turn right, we joked about how they must not remember that we were VIPs. We both remember very clearly where we parked my car, a late '80s Caddy, nothing special. No one will believe us on this point, blaming some combination of drugs and alcohol for creating a hazy memory, but we knew exactly where it was when we left it.

Upon exiting the concert, our car was NOT in the spot where we both knew we'd parked it. Seemed odd, but we began to doubt ourselves and started walking up and down the rows and rows of cars, and then checking on higher levels, even though we both knew right where we'd left the car. Finally, after looking for over an hour ourselves, he found one of the security guards to help us, and the two of them rode off on the guy's little golf cart while I waited.

They found the car on the first level, parked on the left. The gas was not down appreciably, things that should have been stolen out of the car were completely intact, nothing was vandalized...all we can figure is somebody was fucking with us. We don't have any idea why or who, but we both know damn well that we drove up a level and parked to the right.

I guess it will always be a bit of a mystery, like the ingredients in Spam.

I drive an '87 Montero that used to be someone's do-a-few-lines-then-crash-into-stuff car. It has a steel beam for a front bumper and a crumpled, rustic look that you just can get from a vehicle that's been handled responsibly and soberly. Luckily for me, its junkyard appearance also tends to act as a thief deterrent.

This fine automobile doesn't have a working radio, and we don't ever leave anything of any value in it, despite excellent security features such as large back windows that slide open unrestrained (from the inside AND outside!) and a handy back door that doesn't lock even when we use its special key. Because of these helpful amenities, I don't ever bother locking the main doors either.

One night at the end of a long drive, I went out in downtown Austin with a friend who, out of habit, happened to lock her door. There were still four other entrances that were wide open. But some moron apparently decided that he/she just couldn't live without immediate access to the piles of road trip garbage we had accumulated and smashed the window on the passenger side. Though this clever strategy, he/she was able to enter through what was, again, THE ONLY DOOR ON THE WHOLE CAR THAT WAS LOCKED.

By needlessly breaking into my car, the crackhead did gain access to a wide array of fine merchandise, including crumpled taco wrappers, discarded fries, and a torn 1974 US atlas. I might have found this scenario extremely entertaining, if he/she had just thought to leave me a check for the $100 I would need for a new window.

My brother's friend (back in the 80's) had his stereo stolen, so he somehow fashioned single edge RAZOR BLADES to the underside/backside of the new unit. Not sure if an attempt was ever made, not sure how much blood was let... seems like a good lesson for a thief. I suppose this would only work on a muscle car, but I love the sick element of revenge!

I was talking to my husband the other day, and I actually uttered the following sentence:

"I had Billy Joel's greatest hits CD, but it was stolen out of my Kia."

Seriously. They left the stereo but took Billy Joel.

Why even break into a Kia Rio? That car cost 5 grand brand new. What could possibly be in there that would be worth the effort?

Well, Billy Joel tunes, apparently. I wonder how much they got on the black market for that.

After I graduated from college I moved to a suburb of Chicago and soon after my car was broken into also.

After rumaging through the tampons and bank deposit envelops I kept in my glove compartment the only thing they took was my backpack which I had left in my back seat. The funny thing is that I had just gone to visit my parents so all my Christian Rock from high school was in the backpack (anything to keep my mom off my back!).

I fully expected the thieves to leave the backpack on my porch with a note to get some better taste in music once they found out what they had actually taken, but alas they were never returned! My mom likes to say that I may have made a difference in the thieves lives, I figure I just made a dumpster a little heavier!

Well, my two brushes with crime were relatively polite.
After I graduated from college, I had the high powered job of cashier in a health food store. One day some guy comes in and tells me to open the register and give him all the money. As I was emptying it out, food stamps and all, I said, "did you want me to put this in a bag or something?" and he stopped to think and then said, "No. No thank you."

Years later, my house was robbed. They left the place as neat as a pin. It was only much after we returned home that we even figured it out. I was pissed that they had taken my huge LL Bean tote bag from next to the front door. I'm guessing they used it as a shopping bag as they made their way through the house.

I've never had a car radio stolen. It may be because my car radios suck lollipops and I usually just go with what is factory installed. There isn't much point to a fancy one because I don't need to hear Laurie Berkner or Raffi or Trout Fishing (ok, I like Trout Fishing) on 8 speakers.
But once my brother tried to fix a radio in a car we shared and when he was done you had to turn the headlights on to get the radio to work, then if you went over a bump it changed stations. Gotta love 81 Ford Fairmonts. That car had many special features.

It was 2003, I was pregnant, we were coming home from vacation. The van got broken into and they stole my purse. There was a cell phone, camera, portable tv, all kinds of goodies but they just took my purse. THERE WASN'T ANYTHING IN MY PURSE! The only thing that pissed me off was the Ident-a-kid id's I had in my purse...SO they knew more about me and my family than needed. We determined it was just kids that did it.

Due to the nasty "they touched my stuff" feeling, I bought a new van :)

Shit, sorry about the double

Heather,
I'm so sorry - that's totally sucks.
I've been lucky never to have had my car broken into. I guess nobody wants to bother with an old jeep that still has a cassette player. I did once have the tires on my bike popped (probably because the would-be thief couldn't get through my NASA-quality chain). I had to walk the bike home at 4:00 AM for half an hour - not fun.
And speaking of bikes, my dad had his stolen when he forgot to chain it up by his fence one night. A few days later he is walking down his block and sees a man come out from a house with the bike. It was an old 10-speed that he recognized immediately and so he confronted the man about it. The man played dumb at first but finally gave the bike back to my dad when he threatened to call the cops.
So my pops got lucky and it was a happy ending. But how stupid is this thief, thinking that he can just ride this bike on the same block as my dad and no one would notice.

I spent the first 30+ years of my life living in Missouri and never had my car broken into whether I locked it or not.

Lived in Corpus Christi TX and some idiot broke the window, stole nothing and the car was unlocked to begin with! At the time I was working HR for Home Depot and we had cars broken into at least twice a week, sometimes even stolen, so I got off lucky. The scariest thing down there was sometimes they just stole your insurance card or mail so they had your address and could rob your house.

Sign me, Very happy to be living in the mild Wisconsin Northwoods where nothing ever happens and a family fight can make the newspaper cuz it's just that boring up here.

i was selling my soon-to-be-ex-husband's truck and i had it parked in a kmart lot. mistake number 1.

mistake number 2: i actually advertised the stereo and speakers on the sign the window. DUH.

kick ass stereo and giant speakers got stolen within 48 hours. i felt like a major dumb ass.

Before the age of cell phones and freakishly rampant identity theft, a friend called me drunk and crying from the phone booth at the local bar with, "He (random hook-up of the week) won't TALK to me, I want to go HOME, but it's COLD out and I can't DRIVE. PLEEEEEEASE come get me...." I grab my purse (a lovely Coach back-pack), throw it on the passenger seat and drive two blocks to the bar, slamming hard on the brakes at one point because of some folks lollygagging in the middle of the street. I park in the alley, in front of the entrance of a busy, crowded, two-bouncers-working-the-door bar, locking the car as I exit, and slip inside to grab my friend. Not two minutes later I exit the bar (sans friend, who was making out with the guy who wouldn't TALK to her and she didn't WANT to go home anymore) and see - from the door where the bouncers are standing - that there's glass all over the ground by my passenger side door.

Some asswipe hammered the window and swiped my purse (admittedly stupid to leave it there - but seriously - two minutes, two bouncers - really?). After a "What the FUCK - how could you two not SEE that??" conversation with the bouncers and a chat with the owner of the bar ("Bummer, kid"), I went back to the car and drove home, this time slamming on the brakes because of a red light jumping out at me. A noise from the passenger-side floor: my wallet, my ridiculously expensive sunglasses, my CD player - they all slide out from under the seat, where everything had flown when I hit the brakes on my way to the bar. Thieves got a practically empty purse. And, better still? A week later a lovely woman calls to tell me her son found my purse on the roof her apartment building, with an empty checkbook register (with my name and number in it) and a tube of lipstick laying next to it. Did she want me to drop everything off?

Everyone I know has a similar experience - big city, little city - there are batshit high motherfuckers everywhere, not using their wherewithall while thieving folks. Thanks for sharing - fun memories, eh?

My husband hates it when I tell this story...

Many years ago while I was in college, my dad decided to replace the tub in my parents' home on Sunday afternoon. It was an old cast iron jobby -- he broke it up and threw it out the window to be cleaned up later. That afternoon he brought the new tub up: it was the wrong size. The store was closed so he couldn't exchange it that afternoon: the tub went into his van to be returned the next day after work.

Well, the next day while my dad was working, the van was stolen. My mom called the insurance agent to start the process of filing a claim. The agent sure got a good chuckle when he asked my mom if she needed to make a claim on anything inside the vehicle...How often can you claim a stolen bathub?

Geez, have we had the issues with the idiots breaking into our cars. Last year, someone busted in the driver's side window of my husband's Honda on f*cking THANKSGIVING in front of our house and stole the sub. Luckily he had remembered to take the face and CD books inside, and for some reason the guy couldn't get the amp out. Thanksgiving!!! (this is screamed with the emphasis of Almost Famous's "Eleven!!")

Then there was that time in Arkansas that someone broke into my beater of a POS Ford when I had absolutely NOTHING of value inside it. My driver's side window ($150) got smashed in for about $3 worth of change in the console and two 20oz cokes in the backseat from a recent trip home. The nerve!

The one nice thing about Arkansas is that if you want to get rid of a car that needs a new engine, just leave it in an empty parking lot of a store that's closed down. Then go home for summer vacation. In a couple weeks, some guys will pull up with a flatbed and steal/haul it away for you. Who knew?

A few years ago someone broke into my boyfriend's car and stole the faceplate off of his car stereo without taking anything else. Around the same time someone set off firecrackers on the roof of it, also.

Ugh, I've had both the broken window and the stolen radio face (at tho different times, no less) here in Seattle.

The window got broken during the night before the whole family had to go to the airport for a wedding in Philly. Luckily, I was able to convince an auto glass place to 1) keep the car over the weekend while we were away, and 2) drive me to the airport after I dropped it off. Lukily, SeaTac is not that far from downtown. It was just loads of fun cleaning up all of the broken glass. I think I still have a fragment stuck in my finger several years later.

The radio face was stolen a while later and I have the same feeling as you - why just steal the face? What use is it? I looked on line and found a place here in Seattle that sells radio faces over the internet and was willing to have me stop by to pick up a replacement. I sure hope that the "intelligence" of the stereo is kept in the deck, because if it is in the face, I bought back my own stereo face - I got back all of my presets.

Anyway - sorry about the theft, and keep up the good blog. You all rock.

The best part of the story of my car getting broken into and the stereo and tire chains being stolen (but not the cash, or the cd's or the starbucks gift cards worth about $100 being stolen) was the present the thieves left for me.

Sitting on the floor of the passenger side of the car were 3-4 adult diapers. Unused, thank god. The cop suspects they used them to muffle the sound when they broke the window, but I had hours of entertainment hypothesizing what else their purpose could have been.

I had 3 freaking purses stolen in 18 months from cars. I obviously didn't learn from the first 2X's either...

You can only imagine my mom on the other end of the phone during those late night calls home from college.

I still haven't learned because I keep it in the car all the time. I guess I've either been lucky or my vehicle doesn't look good enough to break into.

Speaking of car stereo's...you'll LOVE this:
http://fenicle.com/2007/06/13/letters-from-bob-christmas/

I really had nothing to add, but you open your comment section so infrequently and I felt bad that only 280 had responded, so I thought I'd add one more.

Wait, I've had my car(s) broken into and once stolen. It's the violation that annoyed me more than anything else, the fact that some FUCKWAD who doesn't want to work to pay for his own stuff decided he was going to take mine.

I guess I DID have something to add. Good for me!

15 years ago my husband worked for a burglar alarm company in Springfield, IL. Someone broke into the camper shell on our truck *** while it was parked in the parking lot of the burglar alarm company who supposedly had cameras and employees monitoring the cameras 24/7. They stole all his cheap Walmart fishing poles, tackle box, the 2 year old tube of stink bait....but left the $75 boat battery and the tools. AT leasst they didn't damage the camper shell or the truck...but I'm still hearing about how much he wishes he had his Banjo Minnow lures to fish with.

Being a tad too old to look the part of a fan, it had taken me forever to simply give in to my love for 'NSync and purchase their "No Strings Attached" album. I stood in line red-faced at Best Buy and everything, as once I decided I NEEDED it, I wasn't going to wait for Amazon to bring it to my door.

Of course, that one had to be the CD that was in my player when my car got broken into. So not only did I have to face the teenie-bopper kids at the store once, but I had to do it TWICE.

They took the radio and also the World's Oldest Mobile Phone that my dad made me keep in my car for emergencies. I swear it was the first one ever made that didn't need to be in its own carrying bag. Ooo... bet they got a lot for that one at the pawn shop. (I'm also pretty sure I had spilled hair-color activator on it and melted the circuitry anyway.)

And can't car vandals have the courtesy to make sure it's not going to rain the next day? I've had to drive around with a garbage bag closed in my door twice thanks to them!

The husband and I moved to a kind of sketchy part of town when I was 19; when we got a fairly nice, fairly new car (A VW Jetta) I assumed that it would get either stolen or rifled at least once. Not so!
My little Jetta, my pritty pritty little Jetta, was never touched. It died a completely unrelated death after about three years.
THEN we got a beat-up, battered old Toyota Corolla hatchback... yep, that stupid-ass car got hit not once, not twice, but SIX times over the next year. Thankfully, we were broke-ass throughout that time, so the would-be thieves got nothing more than some nickels and pocket lint for their troubles.
Ha. And also neener.
So sorry about your recent string of totally shit happenings, though. I hope things soon look up for you and yours.

It happend to me, they broke my passenger's door lock and stole all my (*cough*burned*cough*) cds (britney, amerie... dunno, maybe for their girlfriends...) and tried to steal my stereo but they couldn't, ruined a bit the plastic around it and for some time it couldn't close well then it suddenly could and end of the bad story. it happend in the same place, a couple of months later, to my sister in law, still breaking the door lock, we both denounced the happenings, i hope they will get them. bastards.

Hi Heather :
I've had my car broken into countless times living in London and had many personal items nicked...its inconvenient, violatory and bloody infuriating.

The most offensive was having our first buggy stolen, which we had lovingly bought before our baby was born and used for his first few months. That hurt a lot and I wanted to accost any person who passed me by with the same type buggy assuming they were the perpetrators.

At a later date in the same street notorious for break-ins, still in a baby / breastfeeding haze I discovered I had left my car unlocked with the keys in the ignition for a whole 24 hours. The irony, nothing was stolen, not even the million dollar diamond necklace that was dangling from the mirror......

I knew there was going to be a sharing of car radio theft on this website SOME day, but I never thought it'd actually come up this fast.

My stupidly rich uncle had purchased himself a brand new top of the class Dodge Ram 1500 about two years ago, including some kind of flashy Japanese car radio that was so expensive I don't even know how to spell it.
And well, what do you know, on the seventh night after having showed off his latest gadget someone goes and breaks into the car.
One would think the radio, that turned out to be removable easier than expected, would be taken out first. Yet, how does he wake up but to find that not the radio but two car seats and his cool spinner rims were stolen...
Now THAT is good car theft.

I had my car stereo stolen out of my car twice when I lived in a little apartment off the Hillsborough River. The last time it happened they also decided to take all the old junk that I had sitting in my trunk.

Later that afternoon, I got a call from an old friend of mine. Her mom got a call from the police saying that they were looking for me. Apparently, the thieves realized there was nothing of value in those old duffle bags and they dumped it behind a psychic reader place. When the police found it, they used a really old Winnie the Pooh day planner of mine to call all of the old phone numbers listed in it in an attempt to try to find me.

I got so many phone calls from old friends that week. I had to reassure everyone that I was NOT a wanted criminal.

Someone once broke into my 88' Firebird and took ONLY my car horn. They left the stereo, speakers, whatever goods I had, a backpack full of my supplies for photography class and left with just my car horn.

Two weeks ago, right before a friend and I were heading to our college reunion in Grinnell, my friend's iPod was stolen from her car. I can't say that the car was broken into because she leaves the doors unlocked. She leaves the doors unlocked because the car has been broken into so many times that she no longer wants to deal with the broken windows. Unfortunately, on that fateful day, she forgot her iPod in the car.