Natomas Crime Spree

So, many of you in Northern California have heard about the recent crime spree in Natomas. Tim and I heard about the actual spree yesterday (Monday). From June 1 to June 24 there have been 15 home invasions and 14 street robberies in our neighborhood. I have always felt our neighborhood was fairly safe, and while I have always been a bit paranoid about safety, I have felt comfortable taking the dogs for a walk, leaving for work in the morning and returning in the evening with all being just as I left it. We have a security company that patrols the neighborhood 24-hours, so that makes me feel good too.

This past weekend was exhausting. I got home from my day trip to Girls Camp Saturday morning around 2am. Just after getting ready and laying my head on my ever so comfy pillow, I realized that I needed to send in some reports for work. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night. I was dragging all day Saturday and attempted to run errands and keep up with my normal Saturday pace to get as much done as I can. Tim literally had to drag me along on our errands. We helped chaperone the youth dance that night and had to do some household chores once we got home. Once again, we got to bed later than I would have hoped.

Just before 5:00am, we were all (Echo & Bandit too) jolted out of bed when our house alarm went off... loud. I looked next to me and we were all laying in bed. No one opened a door by mistake. Tim & Echo ran downstairs. Luckily, no one made it into our house, but our sliding glass door was slightly open. We think the latch must not have "caught" and locked properly. Thank goodness for our alarm! It scared off whoever was there!

I checked our bedroom windows, which give us a view of the entire backyard (and most of our neighbor's backyards too), but saw no one. Poor Bandit was scared senseless, as he has never heard the alarm sound before and, after peeing on the carpet (I really couldn't get mad at him for it this time) curled up in a ball on our bed and waited for everything to get back to normal. He kept looking up at me with his big scared puppy-dog eyes.

It's scary to think that had we not had our alarm, someone would have been inside our home with a gun (all of the other home invasions and robberies involved guns). I'm grateful that we are all ok, but realize that there are more precautions we can take to keep our family and homes safe. In my household, we will no longer put off getting a motion-detector light in our backyard. We will be adding an additional lock to our front door (we currently only have one deadbolt and that's it- not like most houses that have a key lock and a deadbolt). Gone are the days of opening the downstairs windows and sliding glass door in the morning to cool the house down while we are getting ready for work upstairs. And, I just ordered a key remote to our alarm so that when we leave in the morning we can set our alarm on "no-delay" so that it sounds instantly if someone tries to break in (as of right now, it will only beep for 30-60 seconds and then will sound if the code is not entered).

Tim and I have been talking about other ways to keep us safe and won't be stalling on getting them done. This has been a real eye-opener for us. Most of the criminals have been caught, but there are still more out there. There will always be someone out there willing to break and enter, harm, and take what isn't theirs. We hope you all stay safe and are aware of what is going on in your neighborhood!