Someone Broke Into Our Car. Here’s What We Lost.

Despite our most recent post being a review of the hotel we stayed at on our way from Ohio to Vermont, Shae and I are currently in Canada. (We’re a bit behind on posts, but should be up to date in the next couple of weeks.)

We spent four days in Montreal, two in Ottawa and arrived in Toronto for the weekend last night. While out having drinks with friends in Ottawa, I had a missed call from an Ottawa number. I figured it must’ve been the hotel as we didn’t know anyone else in Canada’s capital, but didn’t think much of it.

We got back to our hotel a few hours later to see that the phone in our room had a message. There was a problem with the phone though which meant we couldn’t listen to the message.

About an hour after we’d gotten back to our room, the front desk called up with some bad news. At some point between 3pm and 5:30pm that afternoon, someone had broken the rear passenger window of our car.

As soon as they noticed the damage, they took everything out of the back seat of our car and stored it so that none of it would get stolen. What we didn’t know at the time was if anything was missing.

I went down to the lobby and met up with the lady who’d called me, then we went out to the car together. In addition to removing all the stuff from the back seat, they’d taped a bag over the window to reduce the likelihood of anyone trying to mess with our car.

Not too surprisingly, the person who’d broken the window hadn’t been interested in the dirty laundry we’d left in the front seat.

Heading back up to the lobby, I took a look at what the hotel had removed from the car. Everything looked good and nothing seemed to be missing, so we’d been fortunate. Our portable kitchen, a box of food, a bottle of wine and whiskey, a backpack with our dog Truffles’ stuff in it – all of it was present and accounted for.

Annoyed that the window was broken but relieved that nothing had been stolen, I returned to our room to give Shae the (sort of) good news. While explaining what was left, I realized that I didn’t remember seeing a suitcase that had been in the backseat.

Sure enough, after going back downstairs to check if they’d stored it, the suitcase turned out to be missing. Although it hadn’t been full of stuff, we still ended up losing quite a few items:

• Wii with several games
• Candy from Sweeties we’d bought as gifts for Shae’s family
• Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts for her parents as she’ll be seeing them soon
• Painted rocks a friend had given Shae to hide around the country on our road trip
• Hand-knitted snowflake garland Christmas decoration from one of our friends
• Sloth donut Christmas ornament Shae had gotten in Australia last year
• A leaving gift from one of Shae’s students

We’re less worried about the monetary value and more about the sentimental value. Ultimately though, we’re grateful that they didn’t take more – especially the hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards we’d left in the car. Note to self – it probably wasn’t smart to leave those in there.

Anyway, the lady from the hotel shared that a similar thing had happened to her car in the past. She gave me the details of a car window company that’d vacuum out all the glass and who’d be able to give us a better temporary fix until we were able to get a new window installed.

So yesterday morning (the day after the window had been broken), we found ourselves at Speedy Glass on Heron Road in Ottawa.

Daniel from Speedy Glass was extremely friendly and said they could sort our car out straight away. We took Truffles off for a walk while they took care of everything.

Almost as soon as we returned from the walk, Daniel gave us back the keys to our car. They’d vacuumed out all the broken glass…

…and placed a better temporary covering over the window.

When asking how much it’d be, Daniel said there’d be no charge. We were extremely grateful for this, so we’ve arranged for the new window to be installed at Speedy Glass in Toronto on Monday to repay the favor to the company.

Final Thoughts

We got to experience the best and worst of people in less than 24 hours. Needless to say, we’re not happy that someone smashed our window and stole some of our stuff. We did an extreme minimalism challenge before leaving on the road trip, but hadn’t expected to have it forced on us by someone else while on the journey! When doing that challenge, each week’s minimalism had a theme. I guess this one should be Extreme Minimalism: Thief Edition 😉

On the positive side, the staff at the hotel were very friendly and helpful. They removed everything from our back seat, sealed the window as best they could and offered any help they could. When checking out, they comped our parking fee which was a nice gesture given that it wasn’t their fault.

The good side of people continued when Daniel at Speedy Glass didn’t charge us for the temporary fix. So what started off as a negative experience has been redeemed by the kindness of others.