My entire purse was stolen on the weekend. We were out hiking in the middle of the country, and admittedly, there have been thefts in the area before...but on a rainy Sunday afternoon I thought "no chance, thieves are lazy and they will not be working in the rain".
Wrong. Thieves get bored on rainy days, and unlike other sane people who flock to shopping malls, they roam about the country side stealing things from beat-up cars.
Honestly! I buried my purse under the pile of trash in the back-seat. Why would anyone even bother to move aside the disgusting bags of fast food to search underneath? In a car that, until six months ago, had no working front door handles? That is dinged and scraped and paint chipped to all ghetto'ed out hell?? I cannot explain it. But my beat-to-shit purse was under there, for the enterprising thief to find.
And lordy do I carry around alot of crap with me; debit cards/credit card/ well water test results/ birth certificate/ hair clips/ bus tickets/ perfume/ my entire make-up bag/ jewelry/ coins left-over from Europe/ etc/ etc. When I realized it was gone, I had hoped to find the thing tossed to the side of the dirt road we were parked at, but no luck.
Three hours after arriving home in a pissy mood, I got a call from the regional police. Someone found my purse in a trash bin near the soccer field, 20 km closer to town. Upon inspection, I found the thieves took my drivers licence and student ID (WTF?? So they could get library books from the university library?), my cash, my bus tickets, my (one) credit card (which I had already, at that point, cancelled), and my cheap perfume. Oh, and about 5$ in gift certificates to the pretzel place in the mall (to use on sunny days??).
They LEFT my set of keys, my social insurance card (an essential, as far as identity theft goes), my provincial health card, my birth certificate, my debit cards, my important papers (well water tests results), my make-up bag. They could have copied my SIN number for future use, but judging by the contents the thieves were interested in picture ID only, and cash. My SIN card and birth certificate (difficult to replace) still had my maiden name, so no good to them.
I was very very lucky. The important stuff was left behind, and my purse did not have my digital camera or mp3 player in it at the time (I often carry those around with me too). So all in all, lesson learned. Third time the car has been broken into in six months. I'd like to believe that if I were a thief, I would target nice cars with nice stuff in them, but I guess each time they got something. The first was an incomplete air compressor about to blow a gasket, the second time our CD player but since the incompetent nicompoops cut the wires on the wrong side of the connection we are certain that thing won't work anymore without some re-wiring....and finally my drivers license/student card and about $80 worth of cash/etc.
And I still hate the idea of locking my doors. Quick, get me to a small town, stat. Ugh.
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