TOPEKA, Kan. – On entering our garage on New Year’s Day at about 9 o’clock in the morning, we found that the side door to our garage had been forced, both our garage doors wide open, and our CRV and Lexus were gone. Both were excellent, well maintained, low mileage cars. We were shocked; traumatized and in a state of absolute disbelief.
It helped tremendously that our family really stepped up. I would guess that within an hour of finding our cars missing, two daughters and two granddaughters had flooded social media covering a good part of northeast Kansas with the details. Both of our cars were spotted in Topeka within the next 48 hours and were eventually recovered, although badly damaged. To put this in perspective, we were told that nine vehicles were stolen within a mile radius of our house the early morning of New Year’s Day and to our knowledge ours were the only two that have been recovered. I’m sure that this is because of the fast action our family took and their constant follow-up calls to both the Topeka and Riley County Police Departments.
I hope that this letter serves as a wake-up call. Manhattan and other Kansas communities are not the same as the Manhattan my wife grew up in some 50 years ago where many people didn’t even lock their doors. Lock up and do not leave keys or anything of value in your cars even if you have them in a locked garage. Since the theft of our cars, we have changed all the locks on our doors, changed garage door openers, and put in motion lights and cameras over all doors.
We extend a tremendous amount of gratitude to our wonderful, strong, tight knit family and the hard work and courtesy of both the Riley County and the Topeka Police Departments!
