An ‘Ewa Beach family is offering a $5,000 reward for information about a burglar who stole an estimated $135,000 in valuables from their house last weekend.
At around 8 p.m. on Aug. 8, a man entered a home in ‘Ewa Gentry while its residents — a couple and their young child — were out. Only the next morning, as the mother prepared for work, did she realize that her ring, along with dozens of other pieces of jewelry, was missing.
“When I opened up the closet, it was essentially ransacked,” the mother, who asked to remain anonymous, told Aloha State Daily. “Bags were on the floor and my jewelry case had been completely shelled out.”
The woman told ASD that the stolen items were largely jewelry, including some heirloom pieces set with jewels. Some individual pieces, she said, are worth almost $30,000 on their own.
“Some of those pieces were things that my grandparents had worked a lifetime to save for to give to us,” she said. “I have pieces from loved ones who have passed away, graduation presents … One of the necklaces, my husband had created himself when I gave birth to our first child.
“We’re not rich, we’re not well-to-do,” she added. “That was almost everything I had, asset-wise.”
The Honolulu Police Department is investigating the case, the woman said, and some blurry home security footage could help identify the culprit: the burglar is about 5 feet 8 inches tall, with an athletic build. They appear to be wearing a dark hoodie, gloves and a mask.
Moreover, the woman said, another house in the neighborhood was burgled about a month prior. A figure photographed in that incident, she said, seems to resemble her burglar in build and gait.
“The way he operated wasn’t messy,” she said. “The way that he looked for things wasn’t haphazard. He knew exactly what he wanted and he got it.”
The woman said HPD told her that the culprit could be someone familiar with the house, or it could have been an opportunistic hit.
But as HPD investigates the case, the couple is taking things into their own hands.
“My husband and I haven’t gotten much sleep because we’ve been hitting pawn shops, we’ve been emailing gold buyers, we’ve just been going all around the community, trying our best to get what was taken from us and to share footage of who this person was,” the woman said.
And, she said, she is offering a $5,000 cash reward for anyone who can provide a tip that leads to a valid conviction.
“I’m never going to stop,” she said. “This case is not going to dwindle out because … I’ll just do my own work to find out, like, who in the community has also been hit … I’d love to catch him, but also even if the news gets out wide enough, maybe it’ll shake him up and he won’t hurt anymore. He won’t ruin any more families.”
The woman said the aftermath of the home invasion has left her and her family shaken. She said they bought the house within the last two years to raise their child in a safe neighborhood, but now “the house is just not really the same.”
“You don’t really feel safe anymore,” she said. “Your home is supposed to be where you relax, your comfort spot … It’s just really shattered something that we had been dreaming of for so long.”
People with information about the case can submit a tip via stolenstuffhawaii.com, or through Honolulu Crimestoppers at (808) 955-8300. The woman said she will work with HPD and the owner of the stolenstuffhawaii.com website to connect with tipsters should their tip prove fruitful.
For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.
