Last week was a pretty exciting week for us. On Thursday we saw our baby’s heartbeat, and on Friday we were robbed. We did not find out that we were victims of a crime until Saturday, though. Basically, some thieves went to the carports behind our condo complex on Friday night and smashed my husband’s car window and ripped out his mounted GPS unit.
Here is the really stupid part, the thief or thieves apparently were in such a hurry that they ripped out the adapter and broke the cord. The GPS usually does not have a charge so the unit is basically useless without the adapter. I bet they felt stupid after running to their getaway car and finding out they broke the adapter. Then again, adapters aren’t very expensive so maybe they have a pile of spare parts. It seems that they did not enter the car at all because nothing else was stolen. My hubby had at least a dozen CDs in the car that are worth more than the GPS.
The GPS was a Christmas gift to us from my hubby’s parents and we do not really expect that we will get it back. We reported the incident to the police and an officer swung by. He said that unless we had a serial number of the unit then it is pretty much impossible to identify the unit was ours even if they seized it from the criminals. This makes complete sense, but my husband threw away the box a long time ago so there is no way we can track it. The most annoying thing about this incident is really the broken car window because it left glass all over the floor and inside the car. It took my husband and I an hour just to clean the seats and the floor, and we both got cuts from the glass. My husband said that if he saw the thieves at his car he would have just given them two hundred dollars cash not to break his window because it is a big inconvenience for us.
Now my husband’s car is in the shop waiting for an inspection and repair and he is borrowing my car to go to work. We will probably have to pay an auto insurance deductible for the window repair even though it was a theft and we are not at fault. It really makes me wonder how much money these thieves make from these used devices because the GPS unit that was stolen from us costs $80 new, and it is about 1.5 years old so I estimate it to be worth $15 to $40 dollars just from gadgetry depreciation. Additionally, since the thieves ripped out the adpater they probably need to replace the adapter just to get a buyer. I looked online and the adapter costs around $15 to $20, so if they do buy a new adapter the profit they would get is around $-5 to $20. Is that really worth smashing our car window? I guess I just don’t understand criminals.
Anyway, I’m thankful that my hubby’s car wasn’t stolen and other things weren’t stolen. On a completely unrelated note we found a hummingbird nest on the flower vines on our fence, and there is a super cute baby hummingbird in it. That kind of made the weekend a little brighter.
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6 comments ↓
Wow… that’s kind of scary. I sometimes leave my wallet or cell phone sitting on the passenger seat next to me when I leave my car for a bit.
COMPLETELY STUPID.
Thanks for the reminder to be smart. It can happen to anybody.
I’m sorry to hear that happened to you. I understand about having to clean out broken window glass from your car. I’ve had to do that twice in the last five years. The first time they stole my cd/radio player + 12 disc cd changer (in trunk) plus my tennis racket and a box of cassette tapes I’d had since I was about 9. The second time, nothing was stolen. Just my window broken. Ugh!
It sure is a bit of a hassle but when I had my gps before, I never left it mounted on the windshield, I always took it down and hid it either in the center console or took it with me to the house.
I did have someone break into my car in my own driveway and after that I learned not to leave anything visible in the car.
The more messy your car is inside such as books, back packs, etc. the more likely someone will want to break in.
I never, ever, ever, EVER in a million years, leave ANYTHING electronic in the car.
Thieves can pass a wand over your car and it beeps when it hears a battery. Then they just target what they want to steal.
I don’t leave anything in the car.
This why I never liked the idea of buying an add-on GPS unit.. Those things are relatively expensive and there are plenty of people out there who will not hesitate to smash your car’s window to steal something worth less than 50 bucks.
It was probably a neighbors kid or a visitor, who saw an opportunity and took it. I think a lot of the stuff stolen from cars is purely opportunistic. I usually never leave things visible in my car, but on one of the rare occasions that I did, thieves broke a window to steal a $5 pair of thin fleece gloves. It had just started to snow and they were probably cold, but that was their downfall. When the cops came, I showed them their tracks, they were arrested (3 total, 2 were already on probation and back to jail) and my gloves recovered – I still have them. I had to pay for the repair myself, which was much more than gloves as the upstanding criminals had little in assets from which I could collect. I doubt they went looking for gloves to steal that night, but mine where there when they needed them.
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