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City hit by a second rash of burglaries in a month
By Rebecca Ray
Melvyn Gerst arrived home from work the evening of Nov. 13 to find his front door open. He called his wife, Janet, to see if she'd left it open by mistake. Janet said she hadn't.
When Janet arrived at their Fruitvale Avenue home, she and Melvyn checked downstairs. They saw a kitchen cabinet open. And in the sunroom, half the pieces of their crystal chess set, worth about $5,000, lay on the floor. To Janet, it looked as though a child had entered their house to play with the chess set.
Then she saw the ransacked master bedroom and office. After she and Melvyn searched the upstairs, they found that burglar(s) had ripped brand new flannel pillow cases off the bed to haul off more than $10,000 worth of heirloom jewelry and other valuables, including some 25 to 50 CDs.
The Gersts also found a hole in their dining room window and saw that their crystal chandelier had been broken. They later found a rock on the other side of the room.
Two other burglaries occurred in Saratoga that day. At 2:20 p.m., a resident on Verde Vista Lane found that someone had broken his master bathroom window, searched through drawers, cabinets and closets and taken a couple of cameras and a stereo. The guilty party left a portable TV by the front door, the point of exit.
And that morning, someone broke a rear bedroom window at a residence on Horseshoe Drive and took numerous CDs, wine bottles and a firearm.
Several burglaries have occurred in the valley within the last month, said Capt. Dennis Bacon of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Westside Substation. The sheriff's office has sent fingerprints to the detective bureau and is still looking for the suspect(s).
In the burglaries, the thief (or thieves) seems to target small items, particularly jewelry, cash and CDs, Janet Gerst said. The guilty party has entered homes by breaking windows. Unlike another rash of burglaries that occurred in early November, where the burglar(s) entered residences while people were home, the guilty party in these incidents has entered homes while residents were away.
To safeguard against burglaries, Bacon says residents should always report suspicious people; make sure their doors and windows are locked; make sure their alarm systems work; track when contractors work on their homes; and let neighbors know if they will be away for extended time periods.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
