Very sorry to hear that! It's not neccesarily the value of the tools, but that you had them at hand when you needed them.
Not that this was the case... but open garage doors are an invite.
Interesting story:
I lived in an even less nice part of Madison than I live in now, and I knew the neighbors were Kleptos. I always left the garage closed. So these guys move in next door from a little rural town to attend the local Tech College and they start leaving their garage door open all the time, same with their very nice Ford Pickup, windows down, etc.
One day, one of the guys comes over and askes if I saw anybody near his truck because it's cleaned out. Nope, but I ask the obvious; was it locked? Nope.
About a week later, I'm working in the living room and happen to look out the window. What I saw floored me. One of our neighbors walks into their garage and walks out with the lawnmower and pushes it down the street to his place. Sure enough, the kids come home and find their lawnmower missing. I let them know who took it, and they go talk to the guy; "No I didn't take it" he says. Right... They call the cops and since this fellow is on parole, they look around the basement of the appartment. Well, he must have got scared after the kids talked to him, and the mower was in a number of pieces in his "cage". The boys get a project to assemble, and the neighbor gets carted back to jail. Sure I was popular with the local lowlife for a while, but it was worth it to nab that scum bag.
City life works like this:
Lock your car; even in your own driveway.
Don't leave your garage door open unless you're in it.
Lock the house when leaving home.
My wifes relatives wonder at this; they live in a small "town" of 200 people.
When I was a kid, there used to be folks that took moving vans around the country and while the family was out (Her shopping and Him in the fields), they'd clean the place out.
It was an easy "Break in" as the house wasn't locked.
,Ron
