Photo credit to massivelatte.com

How can I forget this very sad incident that happened in my life almost 20 years ago?

It was the most shocking All Saints day happening that almost made me and my wife crazy.

The night of October 31 was raining. We have a dog, two kids and a maid.

Our home then is a bungalow type that was recently built and still needs a lot of improvements. It was like a row house unit that all walls and two rooms and a comfort room.

Our maid has to sleep in the sofa for lack of sleeping quarter.

The night of October 31 was raining. The reason may be why we have sleep soundly.

I could sense there were people moving but I can’t seem to force myself to wake up.

Moments later, upon waking up I just realized that we have been robbed upon seeing our steel cabinet drawer was open. My wife was used to placing our set of keys in our wall just above our headboard.

In shock I hurriedly woke up my wife and our maid.

The robbers sneak through the window by removing jalousie glasses, step on the sofa where our maid was sleeping. Go to our room and get jewelry box from our steel cabinet.

I saw my wallet lying neatly in our dining table minus all my cash money. My salary, my hard earned money just disappear taken by those son of a gun robbers.

All of our jewelry’s gone just like a blink of an eye. My wife’s used them very seldom for fear of being taken by snatchers.

My wife found her jewelry box about 10 feet away from our backdoor. These robbers just wanted the contents and not the container. Should I thank them for this?

That moment I felt like a child who was lost in a jungle never knowing what to do until I realized that my wife was already on the floor sitting and in hysterical mode crying and shouting.

I have to be strong and be positive in front of her. I have to explain to her that maybe it was a good thing that we never woke up during the robbery.  Maybe we could end up dead?

A few minutes more we were able to recover from our initial shock. Report the incident to the nearest police station and proceed to the South Cemetery by borrowing money from our neighbor.

What I have learned from this incident?

1. According to the Police, dog’s sense of smell deteriorated when it was raining. A robber knows this fact better than me.
2. Put metal grills on your windows.
3. Never place your keys for everyone to see and got hold of.
4. Reporting to the Police is just a waste of time.
5. Never buy your jewelry if you don’t intend to use them.
6. It is safer to place your jewelry in a box than in a jewelry box.
7. Turn over all your salary to your wife (I am just kidding here).

Have a safe All Saints Day celebration everyone.

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Written yesterday 06/11/09

Today -We were nearly robbed

Thank God, because of some presence of mind of our employees, our store was prevented from being robbed by a group of bad elements.

The time is between 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m. wherein some of our sales personnel  were having their lunch break and only a handful of customers were around the area.

Here is what happened as recounted by my Store Supervisor:

One old lady positioned herself near the guard and was trying to distract the guard by asking him a lot of question. Then three people pretended to be customers asking and ordering stocks to our three salesladies who were on duty at that time. They spread each other far apart to prevent being covered by one saleslady.

One tried to circle behind our counter while trying to peek on the content of our cash register. While another one is on the right side of the cashier counter pretending to be another customer. They are communicating by their eyes as recounted by our Saleslady who at that time was feeling nervous.

My Store Supervisor was on the left side of the cashier counter wary of the things that are happening at that moment.

This means that one of them at least covers one of our personnel and committing the crime only needs a “go ahead” signal.

With God’s grace, one of our stock man who just came from the stockroom gets inside the counter and gets himself water from our drinking station. He noticed the action of the two men near the counter so he closed the upper and lower swinging door of our counter.

They now have second thought because of the presence of our stock man. Also, realizing that the cash register contains only a handful of bill they must have realized that the risk is not worth taking.

All of them immediately left our store in a hurry.

Life is so hard these days robbers became bolder. I knew that they would come back but this time, we have prepared a more detailed security measures.

Some Tips to consider:

1. Big cash money should always be removed from Cash register and placed in a more safety location frequently leaving only loose change.
2. Guard’s schedule of break time must vary from time to time. Burglars are good at surveying their victims.
3. Advised our guard to refrain from answering queries of customers but concentrate on monitoring movements of customers. If they persist, call the attention of sales personnel to attend to them.
4. Manpower must be taught of things they should do during emergency situation such as these. Such as one person should call other personnel as back up to let them know you are aware of the situation.
5. Hotline numbers of police and other government agency should be posted near the telephone for easy reporting of incident.
6. In the event that the holdup/ robbery materialized, don’t attempt to resist. Life is more important than all the material wealth they could get into.
7. If you have other idea please leave a comment.  Let us help one another in preventing another crime from happening. Prevention is better than cure!

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