the curse continues

[cellio]

Sigh. It's a good thing I'm not superstitious, or right about now I'd be starting to think about replacing the cursed car.

Sometime during the 25 minutes I was at tonight's minyan, some bastard smashed the driver-side window in my car. It does not appear that he attempted to steal the stereo or the car itself (no damage to stereo or steering column). He dumped the contents of the glove box and apparently rifled through things. (For reasons unknown, he also put the visor down -- but it's a semi-porous surface so it doesn't show prints.)

This was a mysterious act of vandalism until I realized that the only thing missing was the garage-door opener.

That's very clever. Break into a car, pick up the garage-door opener, get the owner's address from the registration card, and hope for an atached garage that will let you break into the house in relative solitude later. (Open garage, walk in, close garage door behind you, work on the house lock at your leisure.) I'm surprised I thought of it mere seconds before the police officer said something.

We have a detatched garage, so about all he'll be able to steal is the sukkah and I don't think he wants that. I suppose he could also return in the dead of night to work on stealing the car; there's not much I can do about that except make sure there's nothing valuable in the car. An auto-glass service is supposed to come in the morning. Completely coincidentally, we're getting the garage-door opener replaced anyway.

I have no evidence about the car alarm. Did it sound? If it did, no one responded, but I wouldn't expect them to. And if it went off, the thief hung around for at least a bit.

Some data about the Pittsburgh police: they came about half an hour after I called; given that there was at least one robbery (armed?) and one sounded-like-mugging nearby being talked about on the radio, that's not surprising. The officer who responded was polite and professional, and he asked if I'd like them to dust for prints. (You could have knocked me over with a feather. Dust for prints? For something less severe than violence or burglary? Wow.) We found a good candidate print on the outside of the car, but when the prints folks showed up (within 15 minutes) they couldn't get anything. They did, however, sweep much of the glass off of the driver's seat for me before leaving, saving me the challenge of getting the car home unbloodied. (Yeah, it's safety glass. But there were a lot of looked-like-shards.)

Comments

[kayre]

Glove box and visor are also places the less than wise keep credit cards.

I'm so sorry about this; it's an awful feeling, and an enormous inconvenience, I know.

[cellio]

Credit cards? *boggle* Nope, that never would have occurred to me.

I do keep a few dollars (tolls, meters, etc) in the car, but it's seldom-accessed and therefore not easily to hand, and they didn't find it.

I once knew someone who kept a $50 bill in his glove box for a specific purpose: he had a zip-lock bag with his registration, insurance card, and that bill, and he figured that if he ever got pulled over for speeding he would just hand the bag over to the officer. The theory was that one possible result was no ticket and the bill not being in the bag when it was returned, but since he didn't actually say anything he couldn't be arrested for bribery. ("Sorry officer, that's my emergency broke-down-and-need-a-hotel/tow/whatever money".) I wouldn't try that stunt myself, and certainly not these days. (This was 20-some years ago.)

[shawna-sue.livejournal.com]

Or some idiots keep spare keys up there.

[cellio]

*shudder*

I once knew someone who used a three-way system of spare keys to avoid being locked out too badly. The car contained a key to his office, the office a key to his house, the house a key to the car. Keeping a house key in the car would be pretty stupid; I guess he figured an office key was safe because there was nothing in the car that indicated where he worked.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

My sister had her garage door opener stolen, too. The funny part was that they *selectively* stole *certain* CDs from her car as well, rather than just taking the whole wallet.

They got into the garage (the car was in the driveway when the opener was stolen) and took a dirt bike they were keeping for a friend. ::sigh::

[cellio]

The funny part was that they *selectively* stole *certain* CDs from her car as well, rather than just taking the whole wallet.

Wow, that's bizarre!

[ealdthryth.livejournal.com]

Good grief! That's awful. It's rather scary about the garage door opener too.

[cellio]

I don't know what's more scary -- that the garage thing can happen or that I thought of that scenario so quickly. Really, I'm an honest, law-abiding citizen! Why do nefarious schemes come so easily to my imagination? (And this one isn't fanciful, as both the police officer and another commenter indicated.)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

"Really, I'm an honest, law-abiding citizen! Why do nefarious schemes come so easily to my imagination?"

Because my evil influence starting to rub off on you? :D Seriously, this is the way my mind works. Father is a special forces vet. You start thinking of worst-case scenarios and prepare for them.
-- Dagonell

[cellio]

I guess it's convenient to have someone around to blame these things on. :-)

[steven.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the garage is detached. Sorry about your car, though! Ugh!

[cellio]

Fortunately, it's merely an inconvience; it's not like someone mugged me.

Now if the glass people can't fix it tomorrow morning as promised, then it will become something more of an inconvenience, especially with Shabbat looming.

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

It may be possible to get the garage "rekeyed" (re-frequencied?) Worth looking into...

And yeah, lots of things end up tucked behind the visor - garage-door openers, parking/building passes, five bucks for toll...

[cellio]

Rekeying will happen automatically as part of installing the new opener Monday. I'm glad Sears couldn't do it earlier this week; then I would have first had to buy a new remote and then figure out how to rekey both. At least something about this wasn't pesimal. :-)

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Oh my, that car does seem to have some sort of curse. I'm glad you are okay and that you were planning on replacing the garage door opener anyhow. That reminds me, the other day I saw a sign on the Lowes in Monroeville that said that they were on sale.

[cellio]

Naturally they're on sale, now that we've bought one. :-)

[laurabee.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about the garage door opener letting people into the house. Yikes, now I'll have something to worry about if I ever buy a house with an attached garage.

I had my passenger door window smashed a couple of years ago around this time. The only thing missing was the half roll of quarters we were using to pay the meter with. Part of me wished I'd have left the car unlocked so he could just take the quarters. :)

[cellio]

Well, if you end up with an attached garage, you can bring some other approaches to bear on the problem. The one that immediately comes to mind is an alarm, though the ones that are effective also aren't cheap. (IMO, if it's not automatically monitored it's not very effective, so you have to pay a monthly fee for that. On the other hand, it's probably cheaper than TiVo. :-) )

Part of me wished I'd have left the car unlocked so he could just take the quarters. :)

Indeed. This guy did $250' worth of damage to steal a $2 piece of plastic and a chance at what's behind door number two.

[amergina.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Makes me glad that my attached garage does not have a door directly to the house. Kind of unusual, but there it is.

[cellio]

Wow, that's very unusual! The only other case of that I remember seeing is on my parents' house. The button to close the door is just inside it, so they park, walk outside, push the button, and get out of the way. I forget how they open it from the outside; I think they have a switch inside their house.

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you weren't hurt. Prayers and good thoughts on the way.

[cellio]

Thanks. I'm fine -- just annoyed. I'll get over it. :-)

[rani23.livejournal.com]

ARGH! That sucks!!!!

I am sorry you have to go through this. ARGH!

[cellio]

Thanks. It's a bloody nuissance! (Err, I mean figuratively. I did manage to drive the car home without injuring myself.)

Awful...

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry. And it must have been cold, too.

A few years ago Aldric was at an event hosted by Cariadoc & Elizabeth's group at the U of Chicago -- while he was in at the feast someone knocked in the passenger window and stole his gym bag, a 6-pack of Coca-Cola, and the radar detector. Only valuable thing in the gym bag was his wedding ring (since he didn't wear it when fighting) and the rest were the sweaty nasty clothes he'd been wearing while fighting.

We never thought to check for the garage door opener. Now I'll have to think more careful about that on my house. He is in an apartment now, waiting for his new house to be finished (the endless story), but with your permission I'll mention this to him.

Re: Awful...

[cellio]

It's always especially frustrating when thieves take stuff they can't even use. You wonder about this every time you hear of someone's SCA armor or garb being stolen out of a car. I once had two-thirds of a take-down bow stolen; you just know that ended up in a dumpster somewhere, but it was impossible to replace. (It was a very good Black Widow that was no longer being produced, and it exactly fit my body.)

with your permission I'll mention this to him.

No permission needed; it's a public entry. Go right ahead!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear it; it sounds like a huge nuisance all around (car stuff usually is for me, anyway, and this has the added bonus of the remote, too). I hope everything gets fixed with a minimum of hassle.

[cellio]

Thanks. I am currently waiting for the glass folks to call.

The new garage door comes with new remotes that are keyed to it, so the remote turns out not to be a big deal for us. (By the way, the protocol for the police report required that I estimate the value of the stolen remote. Um, a $2 piece of plastic plus a battery? I never thought about it.)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

"Key component of security system requiring major portions of the system to be replaced." Then you add in the price of the garage door. The idea is that when they catch this bastard, he gets charged with as much as possible.
-- Dagonell

[cellio]

I'd love it if they could nail the guy, but I don't see how they'll ever catch him without fingerprints and without something tracable having been stolen from the car.

Note, though, that you can buy a replacement remote and sync it with an existing system; you don't have to replace the whole opener in order to replace a remote. When we bought the house one of the two remotes we were given was DOA, and we went to KMart and bought a new one. You do need one remote to do this, though; if both are gone you may be hosed. Programming the new one involved some sort of signal-beaming magic involving the working one.

[sue-n-julia.livejournal.com]

I think the point wasn't the cost of replacing the new remote, but rather the cost of "rekeying" the garage door opener. Think of it like having your keys stolen. The cost of replacing a key is minimal, but the cost of rekeying the locks is ~10x as much. For security, you would really need to rekey the lock, so you set the higher price.

However, given that you were replacing the garage door opener anyway, the law may decide that you were only damaged the cost of the remote anyway. Dontcha just love PA law?

S

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Eek! How terrible! Sorry this car has been the source of so much frustration.

[cellio]

Thanks. Maybe the car is just out to get me, in a massochistic sort of way. :-)

(Glass folks due any moment now...)

[lyev.livejournal.com]

As everyone else has said, my sympathies and support that you had to deal with this.

[cellio]

Thanks. It's going to make for a goofily-short day at work; I hope they're done in time for me to make my noon meeting, but I'll have to leave around 3:30 for Shabbat in any case. If this had been a planned outage I could have set things up so I could work from home more effectively, but I don't have most of what I need here.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Oy! I'm sorry to hear about the damage and the theft. I am glad you were not injured, however.

[cellio]

Thanks.

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! On all counts!

Glad to hear you weren't in the car when this creep decided to do this. I didn't think about the garage door opener--my parents always locked the door going into the house from the garage, but I do know some people who don't. If you don't mind, I'm going to pass along your story so they can see what can happen! (Sometimes obvious things aren't so obvious...)

I hope getting the window replacement is a lot easier than the last trip to the dealership. *sigh*

[cellio]

If I had an attached garage, I would always lock the connecting door to the house. Garages are just too easy to crack. Houses may be easy to crack too, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't apply basic precautions.

Feel free to pass this along; it's a public entry.

I hope getting the window replacement is a lot easier than the last trip to the dealership.

I did not interact with the dealer, which undoubtedly improved my odds. :-) I called an auto-glass place and they sent someone out this morning. Once he got the part and got here it took him about half an hour, and that included the time he spent vacuuming glass shards out of the car.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I had this happen to me once. I still have that car... and I bet there are safety-glass bits still under the back seat. (They busted a back window, which on a 1981 Toyota Starlet is far easier to replace than a front window.)

I'm sorry that this happened...

[cellio]

The guy warned me that I'll probably still be finding glass bits in a year. This isn't my first smashed window, so I believe him. (One vandal, one accident, both a long time ago.)