For 14 years after we moved into Kaaawa, we never worried about security. Our neighbors were our security. Everyone knew their neighbors and watched out for them, their kids, and their animals.

Over the course of the next 13 years, we were burglarized three times, in 2002, 2009, and 2014.

The first time was in November 2002. We discovered the house had been broken into on our return from the annual conference of the American Society of Criminology, Meda’s primary professional organization, which had taken us to Chicago for most of a week.

A lot of stuff was taken. Mostly jewelry, much of which had been purchased at auctions by Steve Rosen and Marty McClain over the previous decade. Two fancy watches. Several diamond rings as well as diamond earring sets. A lot of Ming’s ivory. Two strings of pearls. A camera. It all added up. I don’t think we even reported the less expensive items, silver pins, earrings, bangles, etc.

We had a prime suspect, but didn’t have proof. Brian was a handyman living in Kaaawa, and had been repairing our front deck. He was referred to us by someone he had worked for at a house just on the other side of Makaua stream. We later discovered that person’s house had also been burglarized, and suspicion focused on the same prime suspect.

In any case, after burglary #1, I fiddled around and installed a do-it-yourself webcam.

Burglary #2 happened in January 2009. This time around we lost a 37″ wide screen television. Two Canon digital cameras. A 15″ Mac Powerbook laptop. More jewelry. A neighbor saw two boys leaving our yard, thought it odd, but didn’t do anything.

My little webcam did its job. It didn’t prevent the break-in, but it did catch a photo of the burglar. We circulated it in the neighborhood, and eventually he was identified and arrested. Turns out it was a 16-year old neighborhood boy who had already been in his share of trouble. We knew his grandfather, and his mother. He had stolen from them as well.

After we identified the boy as the suspect shown in the photo, his mother tried, largely unsuccessfully, to recover what had been taken from us. We did get a few items back, but anything valuable had already been fenced. He was busted, but there were delays in the juvenile court process. Before he got to court, he was whisked away to live with his birth father on the mainland where he was beyond the reach of the juvenile court.

The story hasn’t ended well. After staying out of trouble for several years, he went back to his old tricks and, last we heard, had been arrested and was incarcerated on the mainland.

After burglary #2, we bought a mid-size safe and had it bolted into the concrete floor downstairs in our house. This proved to be a good move. We bought our safe from Senetics, and recommend the company for their products and service.

Burglary #3 took place in March 2014. The burglar came in a window on the side of the house hidden from view of any neighbors–then left by exiting the sliding door out to the back deck, swag carried in a pillow case taken from the bed.

This time, our computers and the “good stuff” was safely locked in the safe. But the burglar still got a nice little haul, I would guess, even without any of the big ticket items. We were lucky, although the immediate sense it doesn’t feel that way. Meda’s jewelry drawer was mostly cleaned out, although the best items were in the safe.

And, once again, the webcam did its job. This time around, I posted the photo online and it went viral. It was viewed over 50,000 time, and I received dozens of tips, including a number from people living on the mainland, who thought they recognized the burglar.

And it worked. Two days after the break-in, I was contacted by a man who turned out to be the burglar’s brother. And the burglar turned out to be Brian, the same person we suspected in the 2002 break-in.

Brian, is seems, had a drug problem and a proclivity to steal things to fund his consumption. His family had been trying to intervene, and had gotten him into a drug rehab program, then arranged for him to live with a family member. After seeing the photo of “our” burglar, his brother confronted Brian, retrieved most of what had been taken, and returned it to us.

It was a year before Brian was arrested and pled guilty as charged to burglary in the first degree, a class B felony. He was released briefly to enter a Habilitat rehab program prior to sentencing. In November 2015, he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, “with a reduced mandatory minimum term of 2 years and 6 months as a repeat offender.” The court found “mitigating circumstances,” and said the defendant had taken responsibility early.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. In October and December 2014, months after he broke into our house but months before his arrest, he stole unidentified items valued at more than $300 from a Target store. In June 2017, while still serving his time, he was arrested again and charged with two counts of theft in the 2nd degree, a Class C felony. He again pled guilty, and was sentenced to five years on each count, to be serve concurrently.

But a check of court records shows Brian was out of prison by January 2020. Records show he was cited for driving without a license or insurance, and his vehicle had no safety check.

And after burglary #3, I bought and installed a Simplisafe home security system. This is another system I recommend, because it is relatively expensive, is simple to install and set up, and has been very reliable. I put sensors on all the exterior doors and accessible windows, and added a couple of motion detectors for good measure. Alarms are monitored from a mainland call center. If an alarm is triggered (and we have made some mistakes that set off the alarm), the monitoring center calls in less than 30 seconds. If there is no answer, or if the person who answer is unable to respond with the pre-chosen “safe” word, police are automatically alerted.

When we moved to Kahala in late 2015, the alarm system came with us, as did the safe.

Next: Kaaawa Lost and Found, Part 3. Buried Treasures.

Previous: Kaaawa Lost and Found, Part 1.