Our Break-In - The Happy Ending!

On Boxing Day of 2009 we got a phone call from our neighbour letting us know that our kitchen window had been smashed in.  We were out of the city with family, and so we raced back in to find that we had, indeed, been robbed.  To our fault, we didn't have a security system and the back porch light had been burnt out for some time.  I hadn't done a very good job of deterring criminals. 
When we got the call my first thought was - please not my computer - but more importantly - please not my external harddrives.  Just before the holidays I had finished editing my feature The Untitled Work of Paul Shepard and it was on there.  Of course, it was gone - along with pretty much all of my back-ups.  Months of work gone, and months to redo.  I'd be lying if I didn't admit to having shed a few tears.  But nothing was as heart breaking as realizing that my wife's grandmother's wedding and engagement ring had also been taken from us.
Now, fast forward almost a year and a half.  Last week I got a call from the police department letting us know that they had arrested two people in conjunction with the string of robberies in our area, dozens of counts, and that it looked like some of our stuff was there.  So last night we were able to go and retrieve it.  First off, we never expected to see ANY of our stuff again - when something like this happens it sucks, you get angry, you feel violated, but you find a way to move on and get over the loss - in many cases it's just stuff - in the case of the jewelry it's a little more painful because of the sentimental attachment.  We had seen a news report the night before and so we knew that my iMac was there (I have coloured editing keys on the keyboard), but we were amazed to see that my old laptop, my harddrive, and our WiiFit was there as well.  But what surprised us the most - Emily's grandmother's rings!  She almost cried she was so relieved to have seen them - she really beat herself up when she thought that they were lost together - as if it was her fault that someone would do something like this.  And what's even more bizarre was that yesterday was her grandparent's wedding anniversary.  The world works in mysterious ways.
So when we got home I plugged the iMac.  Now, I had wondered why it was still there - a lot of people's computers never showed up - and despite it not being the newest model - it was a pretty awesome iMac - I had it suped up with as much memory and space it could hold - and then upon taking a quick look around I realized why they hadn't gotten rid of it - they were using it as their own personal computer.  The woman had renamed the hard-drive and changed all the passwords and made herself the administrator.  My login was still there - but my old password didn't work.  Based on how much space was gone on the drive I knew that my stuff was probably in there somewhere - but I couldn't get to it.  Alas.  I looked around some more - some documents (including an admittance letter to a meth clinic) - and then into the internet browser history to discover a whack load of stuff - their connections to ebay accounts, storage lockers, a disturbing amount of porn, and a lot of websites where they were clearly looking up the prices for some of the items they'd gotten.  I made a copy of all of it for the police to help them with the case.  Who knows, maybe they'll even find a storage locker with more people's stuff.
After several hours, and my brain shifting back to my formative years where I was a big computer nerd, I figured out a back-door way through "terminal" (which is like the MS-DOS version of a Mac) and was able to reset the master password and gain access to my original login.  MY MUSIC WAS ALL THERE!!!  Which was amazing - I had amassed an ass-load of music over the years and had given away most of the CDs.  I haven't gone through the entire contents to see what's all there - but it's more than I expected (need to spend time sorting through my external harddrive as well).  Some teenage girl had apparently taken over my login as the desktop image had changed in addition to a lot of iSight pictures of herself making "sexy poses".  So while I'm glad to have my computer back, I need to spray the thing down and clean out the keyboard - based on the kinds of porn I'd found downloaded, I know that my desktop was not used for good!
But now to the saddest part of the whole thing - the two people above charged in this whole affair (the teenage girl who graces my computer was apparently not charged) are Diane Grise and Charles "Chuck" Craig, and they lived one street over from us.  I know there house.  We've walked past it.  And I'm pretty sure I've seen both of them as well as the girl around the neighbourhood.  I'm from a small town and so I've never gotten as close to our neighbours as I did when I was younger - but still - you never expect this from the people that live close to you - and I suppose that's the lesson learned.  I'm not trying to say that people should live in fear - but it's worth being aware that there are a lot of sad and desperate people out there, and they don't care about you or your things.  We were lucky in that we weren't home (although the police said they never broke in to a house where people were sleeping), we were extremely lucky to get what we got back - but I can't imagine not having our alarm system now.  Maybe it's being silly, but it's enough to make people like this think twice.
So that's that - happy ending so far.  I'll be curious to see how the trial plays out for these two and what their punishment is for their crimes.