Jefferson Resident After Robbery: I Felt Violated

“Don’t come in, we’ve been robbed.”

How would you feel if you heard those words? Jefferson resident and councilwoman Debi Merz heard exactly that from her husband when she walked into their house after being gone for about 45 minutes on Dec. 19. In that time, someone had broken into their home and taken what amounted to about $5,000 worth of the couple's personal effects including jewelry, cash, expired credit cards and medication.

“When I met my husband at the basement stairs, I can’t even explain the look on his face,” Merz said. “He looked lost…dumbfounded. It was horrible.”

Merz walked into her bedroom and found drawers dumped out, clothes piled high, and all her personal belongings all over the floor.

“Unfortunately for my family and me, most of what was taken was of very high sentimental value,” Merz said. “Gifts that my children had given me, things like that. Nothing that anyone could get very much money for, but priceless to me.”

Even a gallon of milk was gone, Merz recalled.

“I later found out that many people hide jewelry in the refrigerator. I guess that’s why they went in there in the first place, and then they got thirsty and took the milk,” she said.

Merz said that she went through the same stages of grief that someone might go through after losing a loved one to death.

“I don’t mean that losing material things is as horrible as losing a loved one,” she explained. “But you feel the loss. I was in denial at first, then I began to get angry. I felt violated.”

Merz’s nightmare had only just begun. Next came dealing with her homeowner’s insurance company.

“I called the insurance company and started to go through with the woman on the phone all the things that had been lost. I was reading through the list when suddenly she said, ‘ok, you can stop now.’ I couldn’t understand why,” Merz said.

It turns out that only about halfway through her list, she had met the $2,000 limit her insurance company allowed for loss of jewelry.

“The insurance company only covered $2,000 for jewelry, and I had a $500 deductible,” she said. “So a lot of what I lost wasn’t even covered by insurance."

Merz is beginning to recover. Every so often, while cleaning or searching for an item, she’ll come across something she thought had been stolen, but really had been hidden somewhere. The police currently have one suspect. Merz even recovered one stolen piece, a watch.

“The police have been great about sending me pictures of pieces they recover from robberies, asking if any of it belongs to me,” she said. “So far, only one piece has been mine.”