Example Graf

I grew up in a small country town in Maine where everybody knows everybody and it was always common practice to leave your house unlocked if you went downtown to buy a loaf of bread. I didn’t feel the need to give our sense of security a second thought when my husband and I built our home on a quiet side street….until our home got broken into three times.

The first occasion seemed like a quick “hit”. I came home from work and noticed that the huge green trash bags full of returnables that had been sitting in the garage were gone. I also noticed a jar of change that my husband had was missing. It obviously seemed like something that teenagers would do; and at that moment in time my husband and I weren’t overly concerned about the incident.

It was a hot August day and my fingers tended to swell in the heat; so I took my diamond rings off and left them on my bureau—as I had done for most of that summer due to the heat wave. My husband and I went to work. When I got home that evening I noticed that my pillowcase was missing from my bed, my portable radio was gone, and my diamond rings. I also had an armoire full of jewelry and most of the silver pieces that I had were gone. My husband had a gun cabinet full of guns but none of that had been touched. I was devastated as one of the diamond rings was a diamond wedding band that my grandmother had given to me. The police were notified, came and took down a report of the incident and nothing ever became of it. However, from this point on I locked the doors to the house whenever I went anywhere—even if it was just downtown to the store.

The third episode happened five years later when my kids were ages four and five. I had left the house to go visit my mother around 4pm. I came home around 6pm as my husband went directly to a meeting from work and we ate supper at my moms. I had been busy giving the kids their baths and settling them into bed. I went into my office around 8pm and noticed that the locked door to my desk drawer had been bent. I couldn’t imagine what had happened but after a minute or two I became acutely aware that something was not right. I went into the living room and the corner of the gun cabinet had been pried open and the casing to the front door had been damaged. Three guns had been stolen along with another jar of change. The State Police came with their dogs and searched the perimeter of the house but found nothing. However, one of the officers was fairly certain that he knew who had done the crime. Apparently, there had been an inmate that had just been released who resided in Medway (fifteen minutes from my house)—who had been on a “tangent” and broke into several homes that week. He was caught, admitted to the break in at my house, told the detectives that my house was situated in an ideal location with woods surrounding it, a turn around across the road from my house where they sat watching for vehicles, ran to my front door and knocked, noone answered so they ran around to the front door and pried the door open. He stated that if I had answered the door that he was going to ask for directions. He admitted that he got rid of the guns that night for money to support his heroine addiction. This break in seemed like a well orchestrated plan. Needless, to say, he ended up going back to prison for ten years on the firearm theft……and turned my sense of security upside down.

In closing, it would be an understatement to say that I’m not a trustworthy person after the burglaries that have happened at my residence. As you can see from the above grafs, crime starts out with small things but over time leads to stealing bigger and better things.
I worry about keeping our home safe for our two children. I always watch my neighborhood and jot down license plate numbers of strange vehicles. It frustrates me to think that my husband and I go to work every day to make a living, and in one split second your personal space can be invaded and your families safety could be jeapordized.
Crime obviously can strike any person at any time….I’m certainly hoping that it does not strike our family ever again.