On Saturday, May 10th, 2008, I was robbed in the car park of IKEA in Murcia in broad daylight, while several people were present. It was while loading up purchases in the boot of the car, a thief was unloading from the front of the car. To make certain the thief had a little more time to himself a car stopped to ask for bogus directions.
We have heard these stories before, and perhaps we do take on-board the warnings, but trust me, the lesson is never learned so well as when you are the victim. Please don’t say that it’ll never happen to me, because there can be no basis for that. Why not new?
My concern is that this sort of problem will get much worse. We in Europe are facing some very difficult times in the future as unemployment takes hold. At present those mainly heavily involved in the theft trade are people who have come to Spain expecting to better their lives, and have found that there’s nothing here for them, economically speaking.
The culprit is the very high value of the euro that is making exports very difficult, and so, if companies cannot sell their goods overseas they surely will not need the great numbers of workers they employ at present. When that happens chaos will take over. During such times you can be sure that whatever it is that you have, someone will want to take it from you.
Under such conditions, and to some degree those conditions presently exist, people will make it their occupation to steal from your home, your car, your person. You will never be able to relax your awareness. The slightest carelessness and your valuables are gone.
In my case, I opened my car door and put my small bag that contained my car documents on the driver’s seat. Attached to that bag were the keys to the car. There were at least five from my group standing around the car, but that didn’t stop the thief from approaching, and with the help of the distraction of the passing car asking for directions, he took the bag.
In actual fact he did not get much of monetary value, but he has my car’s documents and the keys, and potentially he could have made off with the car. He must have been gob smacked to have seen me drive away with the car. That was due to my having a duplicate set of keys on my person. I want to stress how important it is to have your duplicate keys with you, on your person. When you need that key, you invariably need it immediately. No duplicate key at home was ever of any use beyond walking distance from your home.
I have since changed the locks to my car doors and ignition, an expensive necessity, and I am on super alert. I take the time and effort to attend to my motoring security, and I recommend the same to everyone.
I’m fairly sure that shops like IKEA, and the large hardware and department stores must all be experiencing such problems. It would be very helpful if they could alert customers to use caution. They could do this by deploying their security staff to patrol the car parks keeping a special lookout for customers who are particularly vulnerable, and for the gangs who operate such rip-off scams.
You’ll know that we are truly in a crisis when you have your food purchases stolen when you take the shopping cart back.
Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael
