Today my sister called me to ask, "Have you heard from mom?"
This is not an unusual question. My sister asks it whenever she can't seem to get my mom on the phone. However, today was a bit different. I gave her the usual response of, "no. why?"
Her response: "Well, she called a while ago. Apparently the house was robbed. They completely trashed it."
My first response, of course, was shock.
Then I kind of felt stressed out. Whitney was also understandably stressed. She was in LA for the weekend visiting a friend, and was a good two hours from home. My mom was handling the situation alone, which was an idea that I think we both hated.
I told her I'd try to call home, and see if mom responded. "She might be talking to the police, still," Whitney pointed out, "so if she doesn't answer, that may be why."
So I'm wracking my brain, trying to imagine what valuable stuff they may have in the house (I don't have anything of value there -- just clothes and things -- but of course my sister has a computer and ipod and camera and things, and my mom has jewelry, and there are TVs and things).
I think, man, I really wish I could help my mom out. But it seems like there has to be someone I can call. Ah! I call James. He says he'll head over. I think it's mostly that I just want to know someone will be with my mom while she's dealing with all of this, and James is pretty calm and collected, so he'll be good at that. He goes over and helps her clean things up a bit, and goes to Lowe's and buys extra locks for the windows and the sliding glass door, and puts them on for her, and helps my sister out, too.
He calls me and tells me that the house is a huge mess, and my sister calls later and says the same thing. My mom calls and tells me to cut off her debit card for my account, because she thinks they may have taken it.
I can't think of anything more stressful than having someone ransack your house.
I am really glad that neither my mom nor my sister had been there, but then again -- I wonder if this would have happened if they had been.
We'd been robbed once before in that house -- when I was maybe 7 or 8, so it was a while ago, and it was just some teenage girls. The police eventually caught them.
But this is different. My mom told me she hasn't been able figure out what was stolen, if anything. It seems like, from what I've heard, they wrecked the house just for fun. And I really don't know what to think of that.
All I know is, it's just my mom and my sister at that house, and I will be ridiculously angry if this happens again. I'm ridiculously angry about it right now.
Why the hell do people do things like this?
