Saratoga News

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Home burglarized by man posing as a water employee

By Michele Tjin

It's not the welcome that a new resident expects when moving into a neighborhood. Less than a month after a Saratoga woman began living in her new home on Westview Drive, someone posing as an employee from the water district burglarized her house.

A man dressed in a uniform and a yellow hard hat knocked on the resident's door on July 27 at 11:30 a.m. The woman was gone during the day, so her parents answered the door and led the man to the water meter. After the parents came back, they noticed one of the rooms had been rummaged through. More importantly, someone made off with $6,000 in cash and 10 pieces of jewelry.

"I had just moved in," said the woman, who requested that her name not be used. "I was planning to [get] a safety box."

The Westview Drive resident moved to Saratoga from Riverside on July 8 to be closer to her new position, working in vector ecology with Santa Clara County. Despite the high housing prices, she chose to move to Saratoga because it has a reputation of being a safe city, she said.

But now, the burglary has her worried.

"I cannot sleep," she said. "I feel someone is watching at night."

The victim said she wanted her neighbors, especially seniors, to know what happened to her so they can be alert and not fall prey to the same ruse. Ironically, her parents, who are from Iran and don't speak much English, stayed with the con man because they didn't think it was a good idea to leave him alone, said the woman's sister, who also did not want to be named.

An officer with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department said that so far, it doesn't seem that other houses have been hit in Saratoga.

"We know this has happened before, but not in recent weeks," said Brad Davis, a neighborhood resource officer.

To be on the safe side, Davis advises residents to ask questions through the door when an employee claiming to be from a utility company or the water district shows up at the door. Davis also said that it's OK to ask for credentials and call a company to verify someone's identity.

"We all want to be courteous and not embarrass them and challenge who they are," Davis said. "We want to be nice, but we have to protect ourselves first. "