The photo below is a tiny slice of what we came home to around 10 pm a couple of weeks ago. Burglars had thrown a rock through our bedroom sliding door window (so as not to break the alarm sensors in the door frame.) They came in and ransacked our two armoires, dumping stuff onto the floor, pulled a large mirror down (looking for a safe, then went into the closet where they pulled out every drawer and dumped it out, pulled down all our shoeboxes and emptied the contents of the chest you can see.

Next they went into DH's office and went through his things, scattering credit cards around, then into my office where they found my office safe--about 14" x 14" cube. Since it was locked they picked it up and carried it away.

The police officer who came out said that they could have been in and out within 3-5 minutes. They were looking for cash and jewelry. They bypassed my husband's European currency and his silver cufflinks, but got away with quite a bit of my jewelry. The safe was mainly for safekeeping documents from fire. Now I'm sorry I left it locked--they took my grandfather and great-grandfather's letters written before WWI. They are scanned, but I had planned on donating the originals to an archive. They also took other irreplaceable historical documents I had collected--not really worth anything to anyone else.

I found a few pieces of jewelry tossed on the floor under piles of my underwear and they missed a few others that were in my armoire sitting under my straw fedora.

They took many things of sentimental value, including my mother's engagement watch (of little value) and jewelry that I had collected during our travels over the last decades. They took other things that had belonged to my mother, but it wasn't worth anything. Several years ago I had some of my older pieces broken apart and redesigned into original pieces--the police say I might possibly get those back. I doubt it. I wish I had been wearing my best jewelry that night.

Despite many complaints to the city, our corner is very dark because three street lights have been out for months. The city did come and fix one light on the Monday after the assault on our house. We had been talking about upgrading our home security but hadn't gotten around to calling our company. Now we have and they will be out tomorrow to upgrade our alarms and add more. We will be adding motion sensitive lights around the outside of our house. We will have a camera at the front door.

Several months ago the police gave out the word that before answering a burglar alarm they would require the alarm company to drive by the house and verify that there was a break in. We've been told that the number of burglaries has gone way up since then.

Advice: don't save your good things for best. Wear them as often as you can. (Of course be careful for your own personal safety when you are out.