I was on my way to church when...

Two years ago when I was getting ready to take off to Vacation Bible School, I went out to my car to find that my windshield had been smashed, but not broken.

Today, I was going out to my car to go to church, which I'd planned on going to since Monday in order to observe a student we just got that has special needs. I was supposed to be figuring out what would make him sit and listen like the rest of the kids and showing the teachers how to implement supports for him.

However, when I went out to my car, to my surprise, the passenger side window was smashed in and the place was tossed. They'd gone through my glove compartment, my center console, and my center storage area. Luckily, I'm always paranoid, so the only thing of value they made off with was a portable CD player I bought when I was in middle school...but who uses those anymore? Go figure they wanted nothing to do with the play money, air fresheners, hair brushes, gum, or August Rush CD I had in there.

Being a person who is absolutely afraid of bad people, the whole event shook me up. However, when the police finally arrived, they put me at ease as they joked around, hung out with the family, and ran a license plate of a sketchy guy that had been sitting across the street without seeming to have any purpose (yes, paranoid me wrote down his plate, car type, and description just in case).

The officers also catered to my curious sister and gave her practice in the art of fingerprinting everything in my car the jerk may have touched.

The officer went through the lengths of showing her how to use the duster and even gave her her own pair of gloves so she didn't get messy. After dusting many different surfaces, they didn't come up with anything, until I had the bright idea that there might have been fingerprints on a bag of air fresheners that were pulled out of my glove compartment. Voila! My sister lifted a great print off of it! This meant I had to be printed as well, which I'm quite skilled at from having to be printed for everything requiring me to work with children!

My sister watched on with the bag she printed to make sure I gave them nothing but the best prints. Now we just sit and wait to see if the prints match anyone (other than me) in their system. We're praying it does so that justice can be done. But, until then my car sits in the driveway, battery pulled out, and the fake money still sitting out in the open, but that's about it. So, if you're looking to pull any funny stuff while my window is busted out, go ahead. Just remember, my sister was trained by the police ;)

UPDATE (6/18/09): Still no word back yet on the print...I doubt anything will come up. However, my mom was listening to the radio this morning and someone called in saying their car was broken into. I guess the following conversation went into why people break into cars, and GPS mounts in the front are one of the main causes. The person on the radio said that thieves look for that mount and think a GPS system is stashed somewhere in the car, so they'll break in, check all the compartments and under the seats to find it. This probably explains why he didn't even touch my trunk or back seat and why my seat was moved all the way back but the car wasn't hot wired. He was looking for my GPS. Too bad that poor guy didn't know I'm paranoid and NEVER leave such things in the car! Hopefully this will make you readers think twice about what you leave behind in your car...even if it's just hints of things you own.

$180 later and I have a new window too. I was excited because the window guys even vacuumed out my passenger seat and washed the window. This means 1/4 of my car got cleaned and I didn't have to lift a finger! What a deal! :P ...hey, I'm still trying to look on the bright side of it all here.