It’s a story of a burglar and an “Angel” who left a $100 gift card in a burglary victim’s mailbox on Monday.

It involved a next door neighbor to the home that was burglarized on Gold Street Monday noon who discovered that a thief had also entered her home while her 23-year-old daughter and 3-year-old grandson were sleeping. 

The woman said she had left to run an errand to the post office and didn’t think twice about locking her front door.  The family had recently moved from rural Lathrop where they had no fear of anyone breaking into their home.

“They took all the money we had along with credit cards,” she said of the thief  who police suspect was the same man arrested for attempting to remove a screen from an adjacent  home in the 600 block of Gold Street.

She said one of the officers who was in the neighborhood earlier in the day came back in the afternoon after she reported the missing purse including an AFDC food stamp card, a bank card, a Starbucks card, a Save Mart card and even some change.  The patrolman located the wallet near the back fence in the bushes, she said.  The purse was located at the side of the house near the fireplace chimney.

“I have an Angel,” she said after finding a gift card in her mailbox later that evening in the amount of $100.  The woman said she put the money toward a home surveillance camera to give her better security in the future.

She had no idea who her “Angel” might be but she made calls to the police department and to the newspaper saying thank you to whomever it might have been who helped her after the burglary.  No one was admitting to having a part in the Christmas donation.

Two adults from Richmond had been arrested for the attempted burglary at her neighbor’s home Monday. They had been driving a dark green Buick, but other neighbors who said they witnessed the man running between houses added that there was also a gray van with two black males driving behind the suspects – suggesting it had been a team operation.