A 91-year-old widow was alone at home when she sensed danger — two thieves were attempting to rob her house. However, the older woman outwitted the thieves by devising a trap for them.
When Vernon Jones had asked for Dolores’s hand in marriage, he had promised that they would stay together until the end of their lives and even leave for their heavenly home together.
But sadly, fate wasn’t so kind to their plans and unexpectedly took Vernon away from Dolores one day due to a heart attack. After Vernon passed away, Dolores was mostly alone and on her own.
Vernon was a well-known antiquarian in town, and he owned a small antique shop that was doing quite well. He also stored some of his valuable antiques at home, which the neighbors were quick to notice and gossip about, leading to a series of robbery attempts at Dolores and Vernon’s shop and house.
As a result, when Vernon died, Dolores felt unsafe in her home. She was alone, and everyone in her neighborhood knew it. So even when her neighbors offered to help her, she was too afraid to accept their help.
One evening, Dolores was returning home from her shop when she noticed her 31-year-old neighbor, Bob, peering inside her house through the front gate. When he saw Dolores approaching, he sped up his steps and walked away, pretending he didn’t notice her.
Dolores had heard rumors that Bob was an alcoholic and unemployed and that his wife had left him and moved in with her parents. The man had been living alone at his house since then, and he would drink the whole day or roam around the neighborhood, feasting his eyes on other women.
Dolores ignored Bob at first because she knew he was a weirdo. However, the next day, she caught him staring at her. She was sitting on her balcony reading a book, and as she was about to turn to the next chapter, she noticed him looking at her through his bedroom window.
She was creeped out by the way he kept staring at her, so she went inside and shut the door to her balcony. Later, when she looked out the window to see if he was still on the window sill, she noticed Bob had vanished.
Dolores had a sneaking suspicion that something wasn’t quite right since that day. As a result, she was extremely cautious and frequently locked all of her doors and windows.
However, one evening, as she went to the kitchen to prepare some tea, she heard a strange noise in her backyard. She tried to remain calm although she was frightened.
She took a pan and gradually unlocked the back door. Her house was quite old, so the door creaked as it opened, and when she stepped outside, she saw Bob and another man jump over the backyard’s wooden fence and leave.
“I will call the cops if you don’t leave! What the hell are you doing here?” Dolores shouted to them as she saw them coming out of a bush, but they ran away without saying anything when they heard about the cops. When Dolores went to the bush, she discovered several beer bottles lying there.
Dolores couldn’t sleep peacefully that night. Whenever she closed her eyes, her mind would wander back to the possibility that Bob and his accomplice could have attempted to harm her. What if they hadn’t escaped? What if something went wrong?
She knew things were getting dangerous, and she needed to do something, but she couldn’t even tell the cops about it until she had solid evidence against Bob. Dolores reasoned the only option she had was to remain vigilant.
So the next day, she hired a handyman to install new locks and cameras throughout her home and backyard. She decided to keep an eye on what was happening around her house to prevent Bob or anyone from trying to break in again.
Dolores spent the entire day watching the security camera footage and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. She went to bed that night, relieved, thinking Bob would be scared after her previous warning.
However, a loud noise from the backyard startled her awake around midnight. The first thing that came to mind was that it could have been Bob again!
She dashed to the living room and turned on the monitor to check out the surveillance cameras, but the backyard cameras were broken, alerting Dolores to the fact that someone had broken into her yard.
She tiptoed to the kitchen window, remaining calm and unfazed. She lightly lifted the window shade and noticed two black-clad figures roaming around her house. Dolores couldn’t recognize them because their faces were obscured. However, she did overhear them discussing robbing her house. She decided she had to devise a strategy to save herself before it was too late.
Dolores immediately dialed 911 and informed them that someone had broken into her house’s backyard. The dispatcher assured her that the cops would arrive soon and advised her not to panic.
She went to the kitchen with her husband’s portrait after she hung up the phone, determined to catch the robbers who had attempted to break in. “Oh, Vernon!” She said it loudly from the kitchen as if she were speaking to her late husband. “I miss you so much, honey! Why did you leave me like this?”
As she said that, she noticed the silhouettes of the two intruders approaching the backyard door which had a thin white curtain that made them visible to her.
“Honey, I still haven’t touched the antiques you left in the garage!” she continued. “Your grandfather’s old gold watch, as well as the antique silver flute your great grandfather gave us for our wedding, are safely stored in the garage. You had promised that we would open a small shop in our home. Those antiques are worth thousands of dollars, honey, and they’ve been waiting for you all along!”
Dolores noticed the shadows becoming lighter and lighter as she mentioned the value of the antiques, and then they disappeared completely. She dashed to the living room to check the camera footage and saw one of the intruders breaking the camera in her garage. Dolores knew it was time to catch them!
She grabbed Vernon’s baseball bat, gas spray, and a lock, and silently opened the backyard door. She sauntered until she arrived at the garage, and when she saw the two men, she sprayed gas on their faces and pulled the shutters down before the thieves could flee.
She also tried locking it from outside, but the two thieves kept trying to pull the shutters up.
Fortunately, the cops arrived at that point, and when they saw the old woman struggling, they dashed over to help her and immediately arrested the thieves.
One of the officers, Lewis Robinson, removed the intruders’ masks, and Dolores wasn’t surprised when she saw one of them was Bob! Her suspicions were correct! “I knew it!” she said.
Officer Robinson looked at Dolores, perplexed. “Do you know who he is, ma’am?”
“Yes, officer!” Dolores said. “He lives in this neighborhood. I saw him and another man in my backyard a few days ago.”
“Well, ma’am, you don’t have to worry now,” Officer Robinson reassured her. “I’ll make certain they’re never seen in the neighborhood again. Do you live alone, ma’am?”
“Yes, officer. My husband died two months ago, and my son lives in Texas. He rarely pays me a visit because he is so preoccupied with his work there.”
“Well, ma’am,” Officer Robinson said. “The crimes are just increasing every day, and it’s dangerous to live alone. By the way, you did a good job trying to lock them in the garage.”
“Oh,” Dolores blushed. “I just pretended to be talking to my late husband and to have some antiques in the garage. I knew they could hear me from the kitchen, so the plan worked.”
“I’m quite impressed, ma’am. I’m glad you didn’t get scared and caught them! Please stay safe.”
“Sure, officer,” Dolores replied, returning officer Robinson’s smile before he left.
Dolores followed Officer Robinson’s advice and told her son Todd everything that happened. Todd was very concerned and told Dolores to move in with her.
Dolores did not want to move to Texas because she and Vernon had many memories in their old house, so Todd moved his family to Dolores’ town after requesting a transfer at his workplace.
Dolores and Todd’s wife, Claire, are now running Vernon’s shop together. They rebranded it a little, calling it “Dolores and Vernon’s Treasure House.”