TULALIP — On any given day, the Snohomish County Jail log is rife with arrests for burglary, theft and possession of stolen property.
Those, of course, are only a fraction of the actual number of break-ins, the ones in which police have enough evidence to take someone into custody.
Behind each property crime is a story of lives disrupted and broken trust. The sense of violation and loss is jarring.
Sometimes when burglars strike, what hurts the most is the sentimental keepsakes taken or damaged.
Ed and Junie Roylance can vouch for that.
A break-in at their Tulalip home in February largely was thwarted, thanks to an alert neighbor, who was checking on their chickens and grabbing the keys from the ignition of the burglars’ car. The neighbor called Ed, who raced home and held the suspects at gunpoint until police arrived.
Two months, two arrests and two guilty pleas later, the Roylances still are cleaning up the mess left behind that cloudy afternoon.
“It’s gut-wrenching,” Ed said. “It looked like the whole house had been rolled down the hill. I’m still trying to determine what is missing.”
Dumped on the study floor and trod upon were some of his sons’ early school work: crayon drawings and first-grade Mother’s Day cards given to Ed’s first wife who died in his arms of cancer at 4 a.m. March 10, 1994. Twenty-two years later, Ed recalls vividly the moment. Her birth and death certificates were strewn among the mishmash of personal papers covering the floor.
In the getaway car was jewelry he’d given to her as well as one his late father’s cutting torches.
Also taken and still missing is a bayonet, a gift a fellow Veterans of Foreign War buddy gave him before he died. Ed always admired Robert Royce, known to some as “SOB” for “Sweet Old Bob.” Royce served in the U.S. Army during World War II in Japan, in the Navy as a flight deck crewman during the Korean War and as a carrier-based electronics chief off the coast of Vietnam.
The bayonet was grabbed from a crate in the study.
The Roylances’ home, plus three outbuildings and a motorhome, were rifled through.
The couple had been packing up their possessions to move into a new house a few miles away. Ed had disassembled his alarm system a few weeks earlier.
More than 25 crates and boxes filled with belongings collected over more than 40 years were overturned. There were family artifacts, photos, jewelry, precision tools, camping gear, computer chips and scads of sensitive electronic components.
A relative of one of the burglars contacted the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office to report a power blower, loaded tool box and spools of cable had turned up in her shed. The goods belonged to the Roylances. The caller lived not far from the couple. Ed’s sons were childhood playmates of the suspect.
The callousness of the burglars’ handiwork has taken a physical toll on Ed and Junie, who are in their mid-60s. Both have heart conditions. Each has had to visit the cardiologist since the break-in.
The ordeal to some degree tarnishes a place Ed treasures.
Ed started building the house deep in the reservation woods in 1988. He cleared the land with an antique bulldozer, dug the well by hand and worked side by side with the framers and builders. The plumbing and electrical work was his own doing. It is where his sons grew up. The house is still a mile from the nearest asphalt pavement.
Ed doesn’t want what happened to him to define how he thinks of others.
He does, however, want his experience to serve as a reminder to others that burglars and thieves are out there and to take precautions as well as inventory of one’s possessions.
“The message is: Don’t get complacent,” he said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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