Friday, December 19, 2008

Best of 60655

Well, County Fair won with 33% of the vote. It is listed in the sidebar and when pressed it will link you with the website. Pizza (delivery) vote coming soon.

Thieves Posing as Snow Shovelers

This is from WBBM.com; not quite 60655, but close enough.

There is a potential crime spree in the Morgan Park-Beverly neighborhood -- thieves posing as snow shovelers, robbing houses of Christmas gifts and personal belongings.

It happened to at least one family in that neighborhood, and they want to warn others. CBS 2's Derrick Blakley reports.

From the outside, the Strand family home looks like something out of a Christmas card. But Wednesday, in an hour's time and in broad daylight, burglars broke in and put a damper on the family's holiday celebration.

"They went through every room, overturned every drawer, broke things to get change, tore clothes and personal papers ... and were able to get away with quite a lot," said burglary victim Kathleen Strand.

Snapshots tell the story: Closets rifled. Clothes destroyed. Drawers emptied. Worst of all, the burglars made off with nearly all the family's Christmas presents.

"Just the night before, my sister and mom had wrapped a ton of presents and, as is our tradition, we put them under the tree and set them up -- and they took them all," Strand said.

Only three wrapped gifts remain, left by burglars on the on the doorstep in their apparent haste to get away.

Strand said the thieves entered through a basement door and adds there has been a rash of break-ins the past few weeks in their Beverly neighborhood.

"There's a lot of anxiety out there," she said. "We're just hearing more and more stories about crime increasing, but with the economy ... everybody's struggling and desperate, and certainly that's why we're seeing more of these kinds of robberies."

Ironically, the family's loss has helped them focus on what's most important this holiday season.

"We're all alive and we have a roof over our house, and we're grateful for that," Strand said.

The Strands say they saw a couple of strangers in the neighborhood posing as door-to-door snow shovelers. Neighbors think those folks had been watching the home and knew nobody was there. There's a warning for everyone in the neighborhood to be alert.

Snow Day..

Ah, the memories. Don't we all remember waking up and hearing those fabulous words "Snow Day." Unfortunately, even though the kids (private anyway) get an early start on Christmas Break, some of us risked life and limb to get to work. Stay off the roads until later, then all should be well.

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