My sister and brother-in-law have lived in California for many many years. One of their recommendations for this newbie was “always lock your car and never leave anything in it. Don't leave any TicTac's, water bottle, a sweatshirt, nothing.” The rationale behind that is there happens to be a lot of car break-ins in California. I practiced being cognizant of that rule and followed the instructions the majority of the time.
When I was living in North Hollywood, I did not have an assigned parking spot at my rental residence. I happened to be really tired and a little bit cranky coming home from work one day. I was driving up and down the street multiple times looking for a parallel open spot until finally I spotted one within a reasonable distance to my temporary home. I couldn’t wait to get out of the car and tend to resting for the evening.
The next morning, I headed to the car to drive to work. I opened the drivers’ side door and looked over in the passenger seat and thought “what is all that green stuff?” Then it hit me, Blue Velvet’s passenger door window was smashed. Argh, I didn’t follow the rule second to my lethargic mood when I arrived home. “What did they take” was running through my mind as I eyeballed all over the inside of the car. I saw my Ray-Ban's were on the dashboard. My black jacket was on the passenger seat, now covered with broken bits of greenish colored glass, but my gym bag was gone. I left it on the floor of the passenger side front seat.
Thinking, thinking, thinking what was in my gym bag? My new Brooks sneakers. Son of a bitch! I suspected the culprit must have thought the bag had a heck of a lot better items than simply my new kicks. While I was not thrilled about missing those and my gym bag, I was pleased that there were not other items missing. As the saying goes “could have been worse”.
I personally have never had my car broken into. More agitating than anything else is the amount of money it costs to have the window replaced along with my favorite items that quite frankly should not have been left in the car in the first place.
I called a window repair place and they would not have a window until the next day. They would come to the house and replace it which was highly appealing to me.
“It never rains in Southern California….” unless one’s car has a broken window. Second to the forecast for potential rain, I needed to seal up Blue Velvet somehow to prevent even more damage to her. I did my best without having any tools. I found some wide tape, grabbed a white garbage bag and cut it with scissors. Was able to tape the bag on the inside that surrounded the missing window. Suited my needs perfectly for the time being.
Window was changed the next day after work as planned and this episode went into the “lesson learned but I got this” memory book in my mind.
This is not a pleasant experience at all.
I had a laptop stolen from my car as well a few years ago.
We take it in our strides.