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Strollerderby
I leave my stroller sitting unlocked on my porch, pretty much every day. I live in an urban neighborhood, but a pretty sleepy one as urban neighborhoods go. I don’t worry about crime, but I do lock up my bike and my car. The stroller, though, no. Who would steal from a baby?
Plenty of people, it turns out. There’s a quiet epidemic of stroller thefts going on in major cities. They’re not taking scrappy hand-me-down numbers with wobbly wheels like the one sitting on my porch, though. Stroller thieves have gotten sophisticated, and are going after high-end strollers. The kind you can spend hundreds of dollars on, even used.
Is something that ostentatious just begging to be stolen?
Celestino Cruz. Pathetic.
I smell a rat, and his name is Celestino Cruz. Cruz is the 56-year-old Florida father who stole over $30,000 “to pay for his kids’ college tuition.” Cruz was arrested Wednesday afternoon on 34 counts of uttering a forged instrument and forgery, organized scheme to defraud, and grand theft. He had been the bookkeeper for only a year at Apogee Business Service, which oversees finances for homeowners and condominium associations. The company realized they had been defrauded when a property manager noticed a check was made payable to Cruz instead of a vendor.
My colleague Meredith just wrote about Cruz’s crime and says “this man’s story tugs at my heart strings just a little.” She adds, “Of course as much as he wanted to pay for his kids’ college, he’s also taught them a seriously wrong lesson in getting them there.” I understand why Meredith has feelings of sympathy for this man, even though intellectually she understands what he did was wrong. That’s one way sociopaths prey on good people, by playing to our innate sense of pity.
But I don’t buy for one second that Cruz stole that money to pay for his kids’ college tuition. He did it because it was the only thing that excited him about an otherwise boring job. Truly financially desperate people aren’t so tricky and clever as to take a check made out to a vendor, have it approved by a property manager and then before delivering it, change the “pay to the order of” to their name.
No, my friends. That kind of foolhardy sneakery is the work of a sociopath who is using his children’s needs as a scapegoat. I should know, because I was married to a man who did the same exact thing. Continue reading »
If you ask me, it would be bad enough spending six hours in a Walmart shopping, let alone sitting in a back room with a couple of obstinate security officers. That’s what happened to 14-year-old Sydney Robinson and a friend after the security guards at a Canadian Walmart accused Sydney of stealing a $1 pack of gum. They took Sydney and her friend into their custody to await arrival of police — who were unusually busy after the killing of a constable that day. So Sydney and her friend sat there for six hours, without food or water, while her parents, Scott and Diane Robinson, took turns staying with them.
Two adult women stood outside a Pennsylvania courthouse for four and a half hours with giant signs: “I stole from a nine-year-old on her birthday! Don’t steal or this could happen to you!”
A little girl had placed her gift card on a shelf while a Wal-Mart employee assisted her – ostensibly with her purchases. Continue reading »
For a high school student, $150 is a lot of money. Whether earned at a job sandwiched between classes and homework, stored up after multiple birthdays, or even just collected, week after week, as an allowance, that kind of money doesn’t come easy to a teenager. Heck, it doesn’t even come easy to adults. So you can imagine that high school senior Tiana Rapp must have been rather upset when $150 went missing from her gym locker, despite the presence of an adult hall monitor.
I would never have guessed that Tulsa, Oklahoma, would be a hotbed of criminal activity, but apparently the 45th-largest city in the nation is not without its darker side. Consider, if you will, this story of an unfortunate mother who, while out for a stroll with her one-and-a-half-year-old, was accosted by three hooligans. One asked to borrow the mother’s mobile phone, another pulled out a gun, and the third sprayed the woman with pepper spray.
Continue reading »
A mom in Georgia went through an unimaginable nightmare. During a robbery at her home, her car was stolen with two of her children still inside.
The kids are OK now.
Here’s what happened: Continue reading »
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