The Cupertino Courier
News
Mailboxes rifled in Cupertino, elsewhere may be serial thief
By HUGH BIGGAR
Beware of the baby stroller on your street; it may not be as harmless as it appears.
According to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, strollers are just one of the techniques used recently by thieves targeting mailboxes in Cupertino. Some thieves have taken to pushing either an empty stroller or one containing a doll, police say.
Cupertino has experienced a string of mail thefts since mid-August.
"It's not unusual, but something we have to keep monitoring," said Capt. Terry Calderone of the Westside Substation. The substation polices Cupertino. Calderone said in a similar case, detectives recently caught mail thieves in the Los Altos Hills who had also been pilfering mail in Cupertino and Sunnyvale.
In the recent cases, Cupertino has experienced about one mail theft a week since August.
On the morning of Sept. 5, for instance, a woman on Olive Avenue checked her mailbox expecting DVDs from Netflix. Instead of DVDs, she found the mailbox opened and empty, and also a neighbor's mailbox opened and empty.
In a larger incident on Trinity Spring Court, a cul-de-sac with 18 homes, several people reported mail missing from unlocked residential mailboxes Sept. 2.
In addition to items such as DVDs, Calderone said thieves are looking for personal information such as checking account numbers and Social Security numbers.
"They are mostly looking for credit cards, checks, bills, anything with identifying information," Calderone said. The identifying information is then used by thieves to make purchases. "They know when certain mail comes, such as from banks, and go through it and throw away the personal mail and junk [mail]," he said.
Calderone recommended people place their outgoing mail in U.S. Postal Service metal mailboxes. The sheriff's office also says residents can purchase lockable mailboxes from hardware stores.
The sheriff's office has detectives investigating the recent Cupertino thefts and has alerted the Postal Inspection Service.
"Also keep an eye out in your neighborhood," Calderone said. "Look for anything unusual. "If you see someone you don't recognize, watch them for a little bit and call us if they do something unusual."
The Westside Substation of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office can be reached by calling 408.868.6600. Mail theft can also be reported directly to the Postal Inspection Service by calling 408.938.4802.
