You can’t see our stoops from the street.
I smugly thought that would keep us safe from package thieves. Unless they actually come up the 10 steps to the courtyard of the 10-unit condominium where I live, package thieves won’t even know anything has been delivered.
I guess they are getting more brazen and devious because I was hit last week.
A few months ago, at our last Oregon Basset Hound Rescue meeting, I suggested we send out an end of the year appeal letter. As with most small organizations, the work falls to the person who made the suggestion, but I accepted it readily. I wrote the letter and wanted to include a small envelope so people could mail in their checks. I looked around in stores, but found none that fit #10 envelopes, so I decided to look online. I found the perfect envelopes at Amazon and ordered 300. Since I would also have to go out and buy 300 #10 envelopes, I decided to order them at the same time, assuming they’d all come in one package.
Well, Amazon sometimes works in mysterious ways and they were shipped separately. The small envelopes came first and I was tracking the progress of the larger envelopes. They were scheduled to be delivered last Monday, a day I had a late meeting and wouldn’t be home until after 8. It was also a day of the torrential rain that darted the flooding in Portland.
As I mounted the steps after my long day, I could see the box on my stoop. It was larger than I expected, but you never really know how things will come packaged.
As I got closer I could see that one of the flaps appeared to be open. Weird, I thought.
When I arrived at my door step, I saw that the box was completely open and all that remained inside was the packing material. I was confused and disheartened. How could this happen to me?
Once I had the box inside, my eye caught the address label. The box was not addressed to me. It was addressed to someone who lived two streets over and four blocks down. How did it get to my stoop? Was this a massive conspiracy? Are the holiday package thieves so devious they’d swap large empty box for a smaller one?
I sent out e-mails to all my condominium neighbors. I’m our HOA secretary and have them all in my address book.
My neighbor on my east side works from home. He e-mailed me back saying he saw my package and had gone out around noon to put a plastic bag over it because of the rain. He has since offered to pick up any packages that appear, and I picked up that last one I expected from him yesterday.
The whole thing has left me with a swirl of emotions. I feel disheartened and violated by the thief; strengthened and supported by my neighbors. And, I can’t help laughing, trying to picture the thief’s face as they opened the stolen box and found 300 envelopes.
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