Like Kris Zacharuk doesn’t have enough on her mind.
Zacharuk, a single mom of three, was returning from Vancouver Monday where she and her oldest child, Christopher, 19, who needs a kidney transplant, had been seeing a specialist.
While she and Christopher were being picked up around 7:30 p.m. at the Kelowna Airport, Zacharuk’s oldest daughter, 17, called to say somebody had broken into their Mission Hill home near the Stairway to Heaven, which the Zacharuks share with a roommate and her 12-year-old daughter, who live in the basement suite.
It was broken in while Zacharuk’s two daughters were home, the oldest playing video games upstairs, and the other, who is 12, listening to music and chatting with friends through her iPod with her headphones on.
The roommate was out working and her daughter had been away babysitting after school and got home at 7:15 p.m.
“The girl returns from babysitting and asks why is the side door open, to which my daughter replied ‘I don’t know,’” said Zacharuk.
“The daughter came upstairs, crying, and said her mom’s big flat-screen TV and PlayStation had been stolen.”
Among the items the thief or thieves took were a cell phone, a laptop computer belonging to Zacharuk, the roommate’s daughter’s wooden jewelry box, food from a freezer, some of the roommate’s clothing, two backpacks, two purses and some jackets.
“The side door had been kicked in, with the chain still on it,” said Zacharuk.
“They were very thorough. Some of the stuff looks very amateurish. Some of it looks like they knew what they were doing.”
Zacharuk believes the person or persons responsible were making their way up the stairs to the main part of the house, only to be turned away by the family’s barking terrier.
“He always barks when somebody is coming up the stairs,” said Zacharuk.
The laptop was significant to Zacharuk.
It contained family pictures, photos of Christopher’s Make A Wish trip to Disney World in Florida, Christopher’s medical records, family medical records and Zacharuk’s financial records. It’s also a computer used by the three kids for school work.
Zacharuk posted a Facebook plea, asking for the return of the laptop to her front door step with “no questions asked.”
Tuesday night, she received a Facebook message from an unidentified person, who basically stated: “Sorry I bought this stuff. It’s in a garbage bag down the road.”
“I got my roommate and we went out for a walk, and sure enough, we found the garbage bag,” said Zacharuk, a government employee on medical leave for her son with a background in criminal proceedings.
She didn’t open the garbage bag.
Instead, Zacharuk called police, who came and got the bag, dusted the returned items for fingerprints and returned the bag’s contents – including her precious laptop – to Zacharuk.
Best Buy has offered Zacharuk the use of a tech person to make sure everything on the laptop is there and working.
Asked how the ordeal has her and her family feeling, Zacharuk replied “scared as hell.”
Anybody with any information on the robbery is asked to call the Vernon RCMP at 250-545-7171, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
