Last week I found myself in a real life Nancy Drew mystery. Let me start at the beginning. My hubby was traveling on the east coast so my daughter and pups were all sleeping with me. At 4am the phone rang and it was my hubby. While I had the clarity of mind to think, “just because he is up doesn’t mean I have to be up” I was obviously still in my sleep coma at this hour. It took me a few seconds to decipher what he was trying to tell me because all I heard was, “breaking in.”

“What? Someone is trying to break in the house? Did you call the police? Wait, I need to call the police. Are they at the front door? How do you know this?”

This conversation was happening while I was jumping out of bed and running to the window like a crazy woman. My hubby calmly told me that the video camera was triggered because someone tried to break into our car, not the house, but it had happened 40 minutes ago and I could relax. As my heart started to ease and the fog lifted I realized his phone had been alerted that there was a person in our driveway. Why didn’t my phone alarm go off you might be wondering? Well, it goes off a lot during the day and…I signed out of the system because it was driving me CRAZY! I quickly logged back into our alarm system to review the video and there it was; some little punk trying to get into our car! There were 4 little punks to be exact. While I am thrilled they were just looking for easy entry into cars and probably some quick cash, it’s unnerving to see people on your property at 3:30am!

Needless to say I didn’t get any sleep after that. At a more appropriate hour, I texted 4 of my neighbors to let them know that they should check their cars for anything missing or damaged. This set off a firestorm of group texting. There were messages about whose car was broken into, who belonged to the neighborhood watch, what other neighborhoods were broken into and even that a car was stolen that night. I had no idea these things were happening during the wee hours of the morning on a regular basis. Then I started getting messages about wanting to see the video. I was fine with sharing it with my neighbors, but it started getting out of hand. The neighborhood bloggers wanted it and the people whose car was stolen wanted it.
I began asking myself WWNDD? You know, What Would Nancy Drew Do?

So, I called the police myself to let them know I had evidence of…what exactly did I have? Well, I guess I have video of a crime that could have happened, but didn’t, but maybe happened somewhere else in the neighborhood? I told them what happened and that I knew the little punks got into my neighbor’s car and smoked some cigarettes, but it didn’t look like anything was taken. I told them my video was being requested by people I didn’t know that had their car stolen, etc.. They advised me to let everyone know that they could have the police contact me for the video, but I shouldn’t just give it anyone. Besides I don’t want everyone and their brother knowing I have video surveillance happening at my house.
I contacted my neighbors to let them know they needed to report what happened to the police, I received A LOT of text messages, and the police showed up at my house the next day to review and request copies of my video. I’m not going to lie, since it was all kind of harmless on our street, it was a little exciting.

The funniest part of the whole debacle is that my hubby LOVES his cameras and he watches everything that he gets an alert for, thankfully, but he wasn’t even here for all of the excitement. It’s really not fair if you think about it. This really should have been a Hardy Boys Mystery since it was his hard work and diligence that got us into this mess.

Public Service Announcement: Lock your doors and turn on your alarm systems! And always ask yourself, WWNDD?

Sunshine & Sarcasm,

Lowi & G