A home entrance from an uninvited stranger jolted Reagan Podelec awake on Saturday morning in the Deer Ridge subdivision.
He awoke to his alarm clock at 8 a.m. and then thought he heard the sound of his back door opening.
“I walked over to the window and noticed a bicycle laying up against the fence. I thought, ‘That’s sort of weird,’ and then I noticed the gate was open,” he recalled.
In the morning rush, he saw a number of puzzling things that weren’t quite right but didn’t put the entire picture together. The back door was open and unlocked, the garbage can in the backyard was picked over. The Oilers cap he nested his keys and wallet in wasn’t in the kitchen where he was sure he’d left it.
Then while at a morning show with his family, he noticed a spate of phone calls from the St. Albert RCMP. A message from a constable said she had a number of his items at the station, and they had a female in custody.
“She didn’t grab much. That tells me she wasn’t in there very long. My alarm set for 8 am must have spooked her,” he said.
The bike ditched in his yard turned up stolen from another house.
He got a call from a neighbour saying their children had found his work ID in a nearby field.
The RCMP recovered his son’s school laptop, as well as Podelec’s keys and wallet. There’s no clues as to where the Oilers cap went.
“I was more annoyed my Oilers cap was stolen,” he joked, then took a sober tone.
“I felt freakin’ violated—they come in our house when we’re sleeping?” he said. “Who does that?”
A 35-year-old woman from Smoky Lake has been charged in connection with the incident.
According to a release from Const. MJ Burroughs, St. Albert RCMP received a call of a suspicious female in the Deer Ridge area around 8:55 a.m. Saturday morning. She was spotted hanging around outside some homes, and then leaving the area on a bike.
“At approximately 10:05 a.m. St. Albert RCMP received a call regarding the female in question, who was believed to be at Circle K on Giroux Rd, using a debit card not in her name,” the release said.
The woman was allegedly found with stolen property and had reportedly used a debit card not in her name to purchase items in the store.
Unnamed at press time, the woman was arrested and charged with Possession of Property Obtained by Crime and Identity Fraud, then released from custody. She is set to appear in St. Albert Provincial Court on May 29.
Podelec now double-checks all doors and windows to make sure they’re securely latched.
Podelec wants to warn people to watch out for each other, “especially with this next-level craziness going on.”
“I get it, you’re on hard times, but stealing from good people for no reason at all? Come on,” he said.
The woman had successfully made purchases with his debit card, and Podelec has gotten that money back.
“They refunded everything on my card except for the cost of the Slurpee,” he said.
