My cousin is an alarmist. She said she had read where someone was taking air conditioning units out of the windows of houses. She kept telling me I needed to secure all of my window AC units so no one would get them. I lived in the middle of a gated community. I couldn’t figure out how anyone who didn’t live here, could get inside the gates and steal something like an air conditioning unit. Not only that, but everyone in our community had central air conditioning. If you had a window AC unit, it was most likely in the attic window. That would be quite a feat to get up to the attic and steal an AC unit without being seen. I laughed at Kim when she started talking about the thefts. I told her how silly that was, and I dismissed her worried. A week later, I was on my way home from work and I saw an HVAC service van pulling out of our community. It had a couple of AC units on the back of the truck. We often saw different service vans inside the gate. I thought nothing about this one, assuming a few people had new AC units installed. When I got home, I parked in the garage and never thought to do an inspection of my house. I was going into my home and not entering some unknown hotel. I wish I had taken stock of my surroundings. It was something my husband was always telling me to be aware of my surroundings. While I was at work, someone had taken my air conditioning unit, and it was probably in the service van that I had seen.