Car theft!
8:30am. My cell phone rang. I was having a good nightmare, so I ignored it and went back to sleep.
8:40am. Someone knocking at the door. The apartment manager. She began by apologizing for the bad news, then said something about 3 cars that have been (insert the verb here) at the garage. I'm still learning English, and I didn't understand that verb, so I started imagining a colision involving 3 cars, possibly including victims, and maybe my husband was hurt. Thank God it was nothing like that; 3 cars had been broken into, one was mine. I called my husband to ask what to do, since I'm always nearly brain dead (can't think beyond 2+2) when I'm not fully awake yet.
So I went downstairs. The police was there, doing their CSI thing. (Looking for fingerprints and obvious evidence; nothing fancy.) My car had the rear window (driver's side) plus the little triangular window broken. (Which will cost $300 to replace.) Luckily, only one jacket was missing, but everything else was there: the stereo, my MP3 player, an expensive camera, CDs... The robber left some evidence behind: his thumb print in the handle (how amateurish is that?) and a huge blue screwdriver on the back seat (LOL!). So aparently, mine was the last car robbed, since he broke the window, reached for the jacket, dropped the screwdriver, and took off. All that expense and trouble for a jacket! (Not that I'm complaining. Thanks for leaving the rest!)
The other 2 drivers weren't so lucky - they got a bunch of stuff stolen.
The officer told me that Seattle has tons of car theft incidents, and he reccomends not leaving anything of value in the car, ever.