A Break-In in These Foolish Things

So last week, at the end of the week, I discovered that someone had broken into my garage. I still don’t really know everything that was taken because they were so random with what they took. It seemed less of a treasure hunt or smash and grab for them and more of a “fuck you” to either me or the apartment complex for not being able to provide more security for its residents.

Here’s what happened.

On Fridays, I normally start winding down toward the weekend by taking the dog to the big park across the busy street. Because it’s during the commuter hours and there’s no stoplight or crosswalk, I have to put the dog in my car and drive the 3 minutes to the official trailhead/parking lot in the park so we don’t get run over trying to walk - which is a whole dumb issue by itself, but that’s another story.

So I rent a garage here in my apartment complex. I mainly rent it because I need storage for all of the product samples I work with doing my development for work. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of work stuff stacked against the back wall of this garage. And I have a few other boxes of mainly holiday decorations, a couple of coolers and some other storage boxes that I don’t have room for in my apartment.

And then I park my car, Chloe Car-dashian, in this garage as well. She loves it in there because she has a good place to sleep at night and avoid the harsh weather conditions (blistering heat, hailstorms, etc). Chloe is also a convertible with a soft top, so all the more reason to keep her inside at night.

On this particular Friday, the morning weather was wonderful, so I brought the dog outside and hit the garage remote button to open the garage door, but nothing happened.

I hit the button again.

And again. And again and again. And still nothing was happening with the garage door!

But as I got closer, every time I hit the button, I could hear that the bicycle chain thingy that pulls the garage open and closed was running - it’s just that the door wasn’t opening…something was off track with the door.

So I tried to open the door manually, and voila! The door opened easily and it was as simple as that! I told myself that I need to just put in a maintenance request to have them put the door back on track and everything would be fine. I got myself and Martini into the car, backed out, got out of the car, closed the garage door, and toodled down the road to the park entrance and had a lovely morning walk with the dog.

Then I got back into my car, much more awake after our morning walk, and decided to reach into the console to grab my glasses because I hadn’t yet put my contacts in, and even though I could see fine-ish back home (it was a mile to get home), I thought to put the glasses on because by that point in the morning, some cars would be driving faster than normal, and I needed to fully see.

But the glasses weren’t there!

And neither was the envelope where I kept my gate sticker to open the apartment complex gate!

Slowly but surely, the puzzle pieces came together: garage door off track… some things shuffled around in the garage (I’d seen in my periphery but thought nothing of it)… the arm rest console was half-up when I’d gotten in the car… and a few things here and there missing.

SOMEONE HAD BROKEN INTO MY GARAGE!

I made my way back to the apartment complex and parked the car outside in the parking lot and looked around the car. The glove box seemed fully intact. I don’t think anything was taken there. But when I looked in the trunk, I noticed that one large container of fancy water I’d purchased for when the electricity was possibly going out had disappeared!

And when I finally went to check out the garage again, I discovered that someone had taken a wine bottle travel case (a big piece of luggage specially made for checking cases of wine at the airport - which I honestly no longer need), and a box of Christmas decorations was gone!

But they’d left the special cooler that I use to take food to mom and dad’s and it didn’t look like ANY of my work stuff was even touched at all!

Everything was all neatly still left in place except for the few items that were missing. So weird!

Who would take a pair of prescription glasses, a wine box, a gate tag, and some Christmas decorations but not the dog crates/carriers, and any of the super valuable product samples??

Such a strange mystery!

When I was able to talk to Jose, our maintenance guy, he told me that this happens so often and that there is a MASTER KEY floating around out there that can open any of the garages in my complex and possibly other complexes nearby.

What the hell?

Then he told me that there’s a thing that a person who has a master key can do to simply pop the garage door off its tracks so that you can manually open and close the doors and pretty much do that with any of the doors. But he said that there’s a sneaky way he can rig the door so that even if someone has a master key they can’t break in.

And he did that with my door and got it all back to working condition and all that.

But you better believe I’ve had a word with management and have written an email and copied the management company AND the owner of the complex (who clearly doesn’t give a rat’s ass).

Supposedly, the complex is working to hire a police officer who will live on the premises and monitor the place day and night. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Meanwhile, I have cameras that I just haven’t installed. Well, I did install one at my front door, but I didn’t want to permanently secure it so I used the velcro thingies and it kept falling off so I’ve taken it down.

But now I need to figure out how to install it better and put another camera in my garage too!

I’ve alerted several other people who live in the complex - especially the women who live alone, and I think we’ve caused enough concern for this to possibly speed up the security action. I hope, I hope!

But I can’t stand to live in fear.

And I also think that whoever is breaking in to these garages is a dumbass.

I’ll update when I hear more!
GS