Modus Alert (and a little breather for me too)

Exactly a week ago, I said that I had just experienced the worst day of my year so far. I wasn't being a drama queen. The day really did go terribly. So what happened? The short version is that one of our household helpers stole from us, and I discovered it when I couldn't find my cash in my usual hiding place. Yes, silly me, I shouldn't have kept cash on me. I had only kept it around because I was using it for my vacation and to pay my sister some money I owed her. A little after I realized that my money was gone, we decided to check around the house to see if anything else was missing. It turns out that my dad's watch, which he got for his 20 years of service in Unilab, had also disappeared. Imagine the panic at this point.

When you realize that valuable things in your house have disappeared, of course you'll start considering the most likely suspects. Now we've all heard about horror stories involving kasambahay. But this one is in a league of its own. In our case, one of our helpers was bound to leave on that same day, and she had only informed my dad of her departure the night before we realized that there were stuff missing at home. Here's the catch: she said that she was leaving to go back to the convent. Yes, she had trained to be a nun (she goes by Rowena Zabala or Peras, by the way. Beware).

Before coming to our house, she had come from a convent in Cebu, and she said that her time working at our house was her discernment period. She claimed to be leaving us in haste because she had sufficiently discerned that she really was meant to become a nun, and was being asked by one of the nuns to the convent to return for a retreat. Before she meant to leave, she even gave a letter to my parents thanking them for helping her with deciding on her vocation, and some photos from her time in the convent. Clever ruse, eh? Given the suddenness of her intended departure, very closely timed with the disappearance of the said objects, her cover story suddenly seemed too good to be true, so we had asked her to stay for one more day while we figure out what happened to the lost things.

I gave everyone at home the chance to return the missing things anonymously. This was at around 9AM. The day went on with everything unreturned and everyone still claiming innocence. After lunch, my dad went home to help my brother and me handle the mess, and we eventually decided to just go to the police station to match fingerprints on my money's container (which, in hindsight, I don't think they actually do here). It took a few hours at the station and some intimidation from the investigator for her to finally own up to stealing my money. But she claimed not to have stolen the watch. At least for another hour or so, during which she insinuated that one of our other helpers might be stealing from us. Eventually, she also admitted to getting the watch and selling it in the market. Then we discover that she also got my sister's necklace, which she continued to insist was hers and not my sister's. The next day, we find my sister's clothes and four cans of my mom's cans of Milkmaid condensed milk  (YES. CONDENSED MILK.) among her things. We suspect that she's also responsible for the disappearance of cash from my brother's table last month. It amazes me how she had so systematically taken all of these from each of us.

Now here's when it becomes even more stressful. After she admits to taking my money and my dad's watch (but not the other items, mind you), we find out that a confession does not translate to a guilty verdict. So if we wanted to see her behind bars, my dad and I would both have to attend several hearings and other procedures to ensure that justice would be served. With everything that I had gone through that day, I knew that I just could not afford to keep reliving that kind of stress and sacrifice so much time. Now I understand firsthand why so many criminals still get to roam free. If you have a crime committed against you, you will have to be punished further by going through the motions of our justice system. So now, she roams free as I write this. All I can resort to now is posting her photo here, in the hope that you be warned.

So when hiring new kasambahay, make sure that you ask for their NBI clearance to protect yourself. No matter how trusting you are, always keep valuables locked up.