Right from Wrong

A woman who noticed two bikes that were in her garage and knew they didn't belong to her family, called the police today. She turned in her son (an accomplice) and his friend, the main perp. They had seen the bikes, stole them from a garage, went on to commit arson or start fires in various places, then stashed the bikes in one of their mommas' garage.

Turns out they were the bikes stolen from our house that I mentioned in my last post.

I don't know the woman's name, nor would I want to print it as I'm certain she will be considered a rat, but she is teaching her children right from wrong..and to be accountable.

I know one person in our respective families once took something from a retail store, and the manager caught that person--age around 9. This was 45 years ago. Told his parents what he did, was marched back to the store to return the items, and apologize to the store manager. Since then, he has never stolen anything from a store. In fact, the person was mugged when catching someone stealing something from a Five and Dime, and had the perp by the collar, but his accomplice used an iron rod to knock him unconscious for awhile in order to enable the thief to run on and not get caught.

I hope whoever stole the bikes understands that "this is NOT OK." Meantime, our bikes are back, spouse feels fortunate, but I think the momma who did her duty must be feeling some pain tonight.

Thank you, whoever you are.

And we thank the Champaign police for catching this very quickly, despite a huge outbreak of crime. I'm pretty certain part of it is summer pranks, but also some desperate "acting out" for various reasons in a country of rising inflation, folks losing their homes, and worse, their jobs.

We don't get to know our neighbors very well, and I think it gets harder to meet folks as one gets older if one doesn't have children or cliques of friends in place. It's time the homeowners had a conversation about it.