Ever got burglarized? Or worse, robbed?

Over eight years ago, I was walking home from school, feeling pretty good about myself because I was getting my “exercise” for the year. As I opened the front door to my house and got ready to dash up the stairs, I noticed some broken pieces of glass on the floor from the backyard door. My eyes followed upward, and when I saw the hole in the backyard door’s lites, I immediately realized what had transpired.

Suddenly, I heard a door slammed-closed upstairs.

I stood there and froze.

Four very long seconds passed by and I decided to slowly walk out of my house. I wasn’t sure if the wind had slammed shut a door, or if the burglar was still in the house — whatever the case, I wasn’t about to stick around to find out.

I ran to the neighbor’s house, rang the doorbell, and upon not getting a response — knocked on the door as calmly as I could.

“Uh, can I borrow your phone? My house got broken into and I’m sort of not sure if the burglar is still around…” I told my neighbor as I stared back at my house.

After telling the police operator the situation, I realized that there’s not much else I can do so I stood there and waited.

To the my citiy’s police department’s credit, two police cruiser showed up within minutes. The officers came up to me and quickly asked me for further information, and what follow suit were like scenes from a television crime drama.

The group of four officers drew their firearms, and two of them proceed to head to the back of my house, in case whoever might still be in the house tries to make a run for it. As the remaining two officers cautiously head into my house via the front door, I looked at my watch and my heart skipped a beat.

It was four in the afternoon — my sister’s class ended earlier. She might have been home.

Oh shit, I thought to myself.

Oh shit, I hope she wasn’t home when this happened. Please, please don’t let her be home.

I wanted to tell the officers, but by this time they were already in my house, and they gave me strict instruction to stay put outside.

Floods of unthinkable images rushed through my mind, and I swallowed hard.

To make matters seeminly more dramatic, it started to rain.

So there I was, holding my neighbor’s phone in one hand, standing in the middle of the street as I wonder if my sister was laying hurt (or worse) in her room — and it was raining.

Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either.

Thankfully, the drama ended there.

No one was upstairs. It was just the wind. My sister decided to hang out with her friends after class that day. My house got ransacked. Socks used as gloves scattered throughout the second floor. A few hundred dollars was taken from my drawer. A couple of thousands dollars and numerous jewelry was stolen from my mom’s room.

My sister’s room was untouched — her room was extremely messy, and the thief didn’t bother to search through her room. Heh.

The detectives told us that it looked like a standard smash and grab job, and by the patterns of ransack, they most likely didn’t stick around for a long time — especially since they didn’t bother to go through my sister’s room.

I wouldn’t say this was an everyday experience, but the fact that I almost forgot about the event made me realized that it didn’t have that much lasting impact on me. Had it not rained that day, I probably would have forgotten about this whole ordeal.

I’ve heard from others that have felt more violated after a burglary, and some have also felt like their privacy was invaded — but for whatever reason, I never felt like that. Of course, had this been a robbery, I imagine my feelings would be quite different.

True, for a few moments while I was standing there in the rain, I was quite scared. All the possible worse case scenarios were running through my head, but upon hearing the all-clear from the officers, I breathe a sigh of relief.

It bummed me out that I didn’t deposit my money into the bank earlier, and my mom was that her valuables were stolen — but at the end, my family was safe, and we all knew that’s what’s really important.

Have you ever been burglarized or robbed? How did you feel afterwards? Feel free to share.

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August 23, 2007