Has Your Home or Car Ever Been Robbed?

had my car broken into twice
once they took a jacket i was quite fond of ..... I found it on a sidewalk 6 blocks away but felt odd when i wore it again.
next time took a flashlight and a mint box with change in it .

I never keep anything of real value in a car and confused as why so many people still do. Worked with many who seriously had important items left in car stolen like financial paperwork / purses/ cash even made zero sense to me.

It is not about the items.... you feel violated and uneasy.
If you meant more of like face to face robbery not me but i know a few who did face that.
 
My home was burgled. They targeted and took all the jewellery -- 4 jewellery boxes. Most of it wasn't important to me, but there were a few items that should have been in our safety deposit box (Mother-in-law's wedding/engagement rings that were probably at least 2-3 carats worth of diamonds, Father-in-law's gold pocket watch, my gold eternity ring and wedding band. I was separated at the time, so, wasn't wearing the rings.) Other items were mainly necklaces, gold chains and several bracelets. Insurance paid a fair amount, but, money can't replace family heirlooms (silver and amethyst thistle brooch from Scotland.)
 

Three items. 1st, someone stole my spare change from my ashtray, kept my tray. 2nd stole my rear license plate but did leave the cover and screws in place, nice. 3rd stole an old pickup bed trailer, with both flat ties, garbage, wasp nests cost $25. Told police I didn't want to press charges, they did me a favor. ( I would have given it to them if asked.)
 
Many years ago my car was stolen from an underground parking structure in my apartment building. I will never forget the feeling of standing and just staring in disbelief at my space being empty. I questioned myself thinking I had parked on the street though I never had before. So I went to check and of course, there was no car. This was my first car..a Corvair...I bought it for $850..The insurance co. eventually found my car and restored everything for $950..and they did not give me a choice of cash or restoration..I would have chosen cash to buy another car since I was making pretty good money by that time..LOL thing was only the seats and radio were removed..the engine wasn't even worth it to the thieves...I understand that as it often threw the fan belt and I had to always carry a spare with me.. :D
 
A couple of years ago, my car was burglarized. The thief stole 2 pairs of Rx glasses, a flashlight & emergency food.
My optometrist explained why he stole the glasses - for the Armani frames.

ETA: Some posts reminded me of two other car burglaries I had forgotten about:
While I was working as a process server in a "bad" neighborhood, someone unlatched the rear window of my Toyota Corolla & took a box of 8-Track tapes.
A couple of years later, I lost an 8-Track stereo while having dinner with a date in a restaurant. The thief must have been an expert;
it was an In-Dash stereo & he removed it without damaging anything.
Geez, we're old enough to remember 8-Track Tapes!!! šŸ˜‚
 
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My home was broken into when I was 16 and they stole so much. Mom's fur coats & stoles. The silverware. All the jewelry except what I was wearing at the time. And yes, some of it was valuable and irreplaceable. They took all the electronics. Radios and tv sets and tape recorders. And my dad's handgun.

My Dad's car was stolen years ago. It was recovered but even after repairs it never worked well and he had to buy another. Most recently my car was entered because mom is 89 and forgot to lock a door. The theives stole a quilt bag of hers which contained her lunch but that was all. We lock everything super well now. Having a bag with lunch stolen isn't such a big deal, but it upset her to see how people are turning into animals. And I felt really bad that she had to go through this.
 
I've had a couple of cars broken into over the years. Both times the thieves did more damage to the window (and in one case, the dashboard because they took the radio) than the value of what they got.

My parents' home was burglarized when they were first married. As a result they were always very security minded - cars and houses were locked up tight. Their house was wired with a monitored burglar alarm by 1971.

All their children picked up those traits.
 
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My car was stolen and another vehicle had the passenger window smashed while parked on the street.

In both cases the hassle of dealing with the repairs was worse than the actual event

When my car was stolen I had to have the steering column replaced.

The smashed window was my fault for leaving a carton of cigarettes in plain view on the front seat.

These days in my neighborhood cars being broken into is a regular event. Late at night kids walk along the street rattling car door latches to find one that is unlocked.

Some are bold enough to check cars parked in driveways. The worthless ring videos are uploaded to the nextdoor app on a routine basis.

Itā€™s a routine part of life in the city.
 
Yep had a couple of cars broken into. One in Spain where they smashed the drivers side window.. nothing was stolen, but in Spain unlike the Uk the law says you must carry your documents with you at all times in the car, so cars are broken into not only for the contents, but even if there's nothing obvious they break in , for the documents . Fortunately I always took them out of the car each time I was home, and the car was broken into on the one day I parked it on the street and not on our gated community car park.. ( more hassle and fuss getting the car repaired)

I had my car broken into here.. where they stole the CD player/radio ... but the irony of that one was that it was the early hours of the morning we were due to fly to the airport, so when we came out in the dark at 4am to load the car it wasn't immediately obvious that the drivers door had been prised open with a tool... so we loaded the car into the boot.. at the rear.. and got in, and that's when we noticed the door was damaged and the CD player was gone.

I couldn't do anything but drive it or we were going to miss the flight...so it had to be left at the airport for weeks until we got back before we could arrange for it to be repaired... Fortunately no-one noticed that it was unlocked and it wasn't broken into again
 
Had my car broken into while I was working a night shift unloading mail trailers as a young college student. The thief took a small box of 8 track tapes and a used pair of dress shoes. I figured anybody desperate enough to steal a used pair of shoes was in worse shape than me, but, I missed the music.
 
Decades ago my vehicle parked at a hiking trailhead along with every other vehicle was broken into by a juvenile escaping from a forest service work program. Also decades ago while at a rock concert at Winterland in San Francisco, returned to find a brick through a window. Trivial loss each time. Having an old beat up vehicle serves some purpose. Car break are rampant here in the SFBA to the extent a few politicians are going to be smacked including some from recalls.
 
I've been lucky. Course living out here in the country, I have many signs saying you're being video recorded all over my buildings. Which feeds into my computer here in the house & when my dog barks at night, I can get up, look at all my cameras & see what's going on.
Sometimes people walk around my pole barn. I have a remote switch that I can flip on two huge 500-watt floodlight's & off they go running.

Most people out here in the country are really armed well. A neighbor about a mile down my road had her house broken into around 7 pm; she is 88 years old sitting watching TV three years ago now. Two guys broke in & never walked back out. She had a double-barreled 12 gauge shotgun by her recliner & was not afraid to use it. Her husband died over 20 years ago. So as she said, I'm an old woman, but my husband & I worked too hard for some thief to come to take everything.

Problem with living in the country we are only 4 miles from town. If someone breaks in, they can kill you or beat you up real bad before any police can get here. Our sheriff admits that it will take a deputy or city police person about 15 minutes to get to our houses. Main mainly, our county has 650 miles of crooked county roads for six deputies per shift to travel over 24/7.
 
2 attempted break-ins.
In my 20's, we were having some remodeling at our family home. A wall was removed & the opening was covered with plastic sheeting. I decided to sleep in that section of the house. Around 2am, I awoke to our dog barking & a "scraping" sound. A guy had taken a locked sliding glass door off its track & that scraping sound was him cutting a hole in the screen door. Luckily for both of us, I scared him away; a flashlight in one hand & a gun in my other. When he ran out, he broke the glass door; he probably hit it with his arm & cut an artery. There was a pool of blood on the ground outside. I thought, "How stupid can he be; it would have been easier to break in through the plastic sheeting." Police thought I had shot him because there was so much blood on the ground. They said, "With that kind of bleeding, if he doesn't get to the ER soon, he'll be gone."
The 2nd incident was also an attempt - I posted about previously. A guy mistook our house for the house next door where he bought drugs & felt he was ripped off.

A couple of reasons why I always chuckle whenever there is one of those "Gun Control discussions/arguments."
 
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Twice they got into our car, we never keep anything of value in our cars, and I had to laugh the last time we did have some CD's in the car. Our taste in music turned the would be robbers off , they left them on the seat if they had put them away we would never have known they broke into the car. We lived in a very small community, and pretty well knew who broke into our car.
 
In the mid 90s a thief broke into our camper van. DH had parked it in front of a brightly lit hotel for work. The glass from the smashed window and powder used for searching for fingerprints (the police had a good idea who it was) were most of the mess. The other was figuring out what was stolen for insurance purposes.

In the 60s my parents home was broken into. Not only did they take things, they opened large cans of tomato juice and poured it all over the wall to wall wool carpets. The stains never really came out.
 
Years ago,, my car was stolen during the night from in front of the Spousal Equivalent's house, where I was spending the weekend.

I got it back two days later, unharmed, completely detailed. Unfortunately, everything in the car was missing, including a box of library books I had put in the trunk to return the next day ($220 worth). Insurance didn't cover anything in the car. I only got reimbursed for the impound fees and car rental.

The perp (a 15 year old boy) had left a CD in the player, with his fingerprints liberally embossed on it. When he got caught a few months later stealing another car, the prints popped up in the system.

I went to his trial just to see what he looked like (I would have guessed him to be about 12), his mother was wearing my winter jacket that had been in the car. Needless to say, I didn't want it back. He got a light slap on the wrist, probation, and didn't have to make any restitution to me. As the lady from the Victim's Assistance Office said to me, "Essentially you've been screwed twice" (her exact words).

The worst part was being treated like the criminal again and again by both the police and the insurance company, getting asked over and over, "Did you trade the car for drugs? Did you arrange to have the car stolen for money? Did you give the car to anyone to pay a debt?" I finally went ballistic...why would I have the car stolen, a paid-off, low mileage, high resale value car to get the measly amount the insurance company would pay me for it, when I could sell it in 24 hours for a much higher amount?

I hope to hell that I never get another car stolen.
 
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