A woman’s home was burglarized Friday in Vancouver’s Cascade Park neighborhood, making the single mom and her 13-year-old son feel uncomfortable in their own home.
“I’ve never dealt with something like this before,” said Debra Deblander, 32.
But, she’s not alone. So far in December, there have been 56 residential burglaries reported to Vancouver police, according to 911 dispatch logs.
The house in the 400 block of Northeast 124th Avenue was burglarized sometime between noon and 5 p.m. Friday. Deblander’s son, Kavin, returned home from school and discovered that their place in the Fircrest neighborhood had been ransacked, according to Vancouver police. He alerted a neighbor who called Deblander and told her “everything is gone.”
The TV, PlayStation 3, jewelry, cash and all the gifts under the Christmas tree were among the belongings stolen; the house was trashed in the process.
What irks Deblander is that personal items were stolen, including a box with baby photos in it and her uncle’s ashes.
“Everything else can be replaced,” she said.
Deblander owns Debra Dee’s Lavish Lashes, a beauty salon in Orchards. In addition to working, she studies cosmetology at the Vancouver School of Beauty — so money is tight, she said.
She didn’t have that many presents under the tree for Kavin and they didn’t hold much value, she explained.
For the last couple of years, Deblander has been a tenant of Clark County sheriff’s Sgt. Shane Gardner, who was upset when he heard about the burglary and reached out to The Columbian. He said Deblander has been one of his best tenants and values the community service she does, volunteering with people who are homeless and drug-addicted. Deblander surmised that whoever did this has some sort of addiction.
With burglaries being such a prolific area problem, Gardner urges residents to get to know their neighbors and communicate when something looks out of place. The police don’t know if a car or an individual doesn’t belong at someone’s house, but neighbors do.
Deblander’s sister, Leslie Carpenter, set up an online fundraiser for the family.
