FRESNO, Calif. (KMPH) -
"She came into this bedroom and when she saw her underwear lying on the floor, that's what made her the most angry," Al Keppler said.
Keppler is one angry husband.
"When somebody violates you in that way, it makes me choked up right now, because I could throttle somebody right now," Keppler said.
His day took a drastic turn when he came home from work for lunch.
"I pulled up and I saw something blue moving on the side of my house. I have a blue tarp covering my firewood and I just thought the breeze was blowing it. And all of the sudden a face popped up above the fence, and I was like, that's not supposed to be there. So I yelled at him, he turned around and he bolted," he said.
It took a second for Al to get his gate open.
But when he did, there was a man standing right in front of him. That guy jumped over the neighbor's side fence.
Then Al walked further and saw another guy running out of his house. He ran across the lawn and then over the back neighbor's fence.
"We have a doggie door. So I'm not sure if they reached through and were able to reach the bolt. We have a slide bolt on the bottom that locks the door closed," Keppler said.
At first he thought maybe he'd shown up just in time.
"I really didn't see anything wrong in the main house. I checked the entertainment center and they took an old Playstation 2. And then I walked into the back of the house and that's where the disaster is," he said.
We didn't have to look far to see what he was talking about.
We saw everything from clothes and dresser drawers to check books and computer monitors scattered on the floor.
A lot of that stuff is replaceable.
But other stuff is not.
"They got my wife's grandmother's wedding ring and her mother's wedding ring. Of course my wife had some other jewelry, anniversary gifts and things like that," Keppler said. "The money is not the issue. It's when somebody comes in and decides to just take something that belongs to you for no reason, and in the anticipation of maybe getting $5 or $10 on the street for it."
Al says, even if they do catch the low-lives that did this, it won't make him sleep any sounder.
"What difference is it going to make, because you're going to put him in the jail and then two weeks later Margaret Mims is going to say he's a low-violation criminal. And they're going to put him back on the street and he'll be back out there again," Keppler said.
To add insult to injury, when Al first called his wife to tell her to come home because they'd been burglarized, she thought he was playing a joke on her because her birthday is this Friday.
She says when she walked in her house and saw the mess, there was nothing funny about it.
