Thanks for the comment. I’d never thought of someone casing the neighborhood when they find out that a donation truck will be in the area, but that certainly seems reasonable. I really do hope that she needed the stuff and that she isn’t hoarding it away, because she doesn’t trust charities. There were a lot of great baby clothes in those boxes and I hate to think that a child in need wouldn’t get them because they are stuffed in someone’s attic. (PS – I do agree that an SUV isn’t necessarily a sign of having money.)

There might be different reasons for her to do this. She might need the clothes or items, for herself or for a relative. She might be planning to do a yard sale or sell the items to a thrift store because she needs the extra money. Or she might be a little bit like my aunt, which is an absolutely fine woman on every other aspect, but she just can’t stand people “throwing fine stuff away”, and that – to her – includes donating to charities. She’s the type of person that would go through other people’s donation boxes or bags and take (she says “save”) whatever she can, or even take the whole bag and stuff it somewhere in her house, because she knows somebody that maybe will need those items sooner or later. She says she doesn’t trust charities, and that she knows better than them what to do with those items.

I’m not saying that woman was right to take those items off you, and I wouldn’t do anything like that, but as a single woman who lives on 160$ a week paying 140$ a week on rent and bills, I try not to judge people too harshly.

PS It just occurred to me: a friend of mine is divorcing her husband and, as they had a prenup, he got to keep the house and everything in it. She’s currently living in her car, because she can’t afford to rent a proper house, and the car happens to be a large black SUV – the only thing her husband left her. See? So many possibilites…

I sure hope that’s not why she took them! I’m still so irked about this. I can’t believe she had the nerve to walk 20+ steps up to my house to help herself to things that didn’t belong to her.

I really wish I would’ve gotten the tag number so the police could have found her. I wouldn’t have pressed charges, but now that she’s taken this I wonder what else she would take. What if I left the baby’s stroller in the front yard? Do I have to worry that she’d take that too.

You know for some reason I hadn’t thought of this as a crime until you mentioned it. You are right though for her to walk all the way up to my house to take my property that is certainly stealing. When I saw her going back to the car I had my son in my arms otherwise I certainly would have run out there to get the license plate number. Now I really wish I had.

Oh and I asked the drivers of the donation truck when they came about it. They said they were definitely the only ones picking up donations that day.

Or is it possible that this woman worked for the charity and thought she’d pick them up on her way to work or something?