Oh No, a Break-In

We did not have a good day on Friday.  Our motorhome was broken into as it sat parked in its usual spot in our backyard behind a locked gate. 

Around 6:30 pm on Friday, I noticed the the curtains were blowing out both of the front windows.  That's strange, I thought, we never leave our windows open without the screens being in place.  It didn't occur to me that something was wrong, I just thought maybe Dave had been working out there and had inadvertently left the windows open.  I saw some linens and stuff outside of the driver side window and I thought, wow, stuff blew out the window. 

After I unlocked the motorhome--yes it was still locked, like we left it--I saw that the inside was a mess.  My first thought was that an animal had gotten inside.  Well, it turned out it was animals all right, the two-legged version of animals.  Finally I noticed that the front flat screen TV was missing.  Ah ha, now I reluctantly admitted to myself that I was looking at an RV that had been burglarized.  It's funny how my mind did not want to go there.  I didn't even notice at first glance that ALL the electronics were missing.

Empty front cabinets

Empty bedroom TV cabinet--I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of all the mess strewn through the RV

By the way, Dave was not home at this time.  He was refereeing a football game in a town about 1/2  hour away.  So I did what I knew had to be done and called 9-1-1.  After several attempts to reach them, they finally answered and told me an officer would contact me.  A deputy sheriff came by the house around 8 pm and I felt better once he arrived.  He did his report and reassured me that we had done everything we could to prevent this.  No other crimes had been reported in our neighborhood. 

After the deputy left, I called both of my sons and sat down to wait for Dave to get my frantic messages about what had happened.  Dave saw the messages at the end of the football game and came right home.  As soon as he got home, I breathed a sigh of relief and let him handle the rest of the details like canceling our RV Direct TV service and calling the insurance company the next morning.  Dave is my rock and he didn't let me down. 

On Saturday we made an effort to clean up some of the mess and begin the assessment of what was missing.  This step was hard to do, but it turned out to be therapeutic for us to start to take control of the situation. 

All the electronics are gone, even the printer and wifi and cell phone boosters.  All the bedding and towels are gone--they probably used those for padding the electronics and hiding them. 

The inside damage was mostly a mess, not structural damage.  We discovered several odd things--the thieves ate some tapioca pudding while they were there, drank four sodas, and took our gum stash, chewed some gum, and smeared some on the driver's seat.  They took our cheap plastic toothbrush holder--actually unscrewed it from the wall.  Is that where people hide their valuables--behind the toothbrush holder??   Strange.  They relieved themselves in our toilet and left us that smelly present, but didn't do any other damage. 

As people usually do after a break-in, we feel violated, uneasy, a bit scared, worried that it might happen again, and generally like we are being watched.  Plus we have to deal with getting all the electronics and bedding replaced. 

No, this is not going to keep us from RVing.  After all, this happened at home, not on the road.  However, our respite and happy place, our motorhome, is not quite the happy place that it once was.  The house was not broken into and our big shop out back was not broken into, so things could have been much worse. 

Thanks for listening.  It's been somewhat therapeutic for me to write and talk about the details of this unfortunate incident.