A Burglary That Came With Blessings

It was the afternoon of Thursday, May 4. My husband was calling me frantically. I was at my office and on a business call. 

“Come home now,” he texted me. “We’ve been robbed.”

Everything that happened next felt surreal. My husband Daniel explained that his mobile podcast recording studio, The Podcast Bus, which was parked in our backyard, was broken into. The burglar stole $25,000 worth of recording equipment, scratching up the floors of the bus and damaging the wiring that was inside the walls. 

When I got home, we watched on the surveillance footage as the thief jumped over our neighbor’s wall, looked inside our daughters’ playhouse, went in our garage to grab a bag and then stole the equipment from the bus in just a few minutes’ time. 

It took a few minutes to snatch the equipment Daniel had worked for years to buy. 

I was so angry that I went out searching for the guy. Full of adrenaline, I was convinced that if I saw him, I’d punch him out. 

While I was out, and Daniel was home with our 1- and 3-year-old daughters, the man came back to wipe his fingerprints off the bus. Daniel was in the yard at the time. He realized he’d left the back door open, and this burglar could be armed. He acted on instinct and pushed our daughters’ playhouse towards the man, who then leapt back over our wall and ran into the alleyway. All of this was caught on camera. 

The police took two hours to come, and they didn’t go inside the bus or take fingerprints. 

I tossed and turned that night in bed, scared that the thief was going to come back. When I left the house the next day, I looked over my shoulder everywhere I went. Every sound made me jump. My husband was also traumatized and didn’t want me to go into the backyard at all. 

Even though Daniel and I weren’t talking about what happened in front of our 3-year-old, she must have sensed something was wrong. When she told me, “Mommy, I’m scared of the monster in the backyard,” my heart broke into a million pieces.

A few days after the incident, our friend Sam Yebri sent the footage of Daniel confronting the burglar to different media outlets, and one by one, they showed up at our doorstep. Daniel was on the local news: KTLA, KCAL, ABC 7, FOX 11 and NBC Los Angeles.  

And then, the national news, including Inside Edition, Fox News, TMZ and the New York Post, covered it. When being interviewed, Daniel focused on the good, praising Hashem on television and saying that everything He does is for the best, even if it doesn’t seem that way. 

We started a GoFundMe to try to get the bus back up and running – our insurance found a loophole and didn’t want to pay us what we were owed. We also needed to make up for Daniel’s lost income and raise funds for better security at our home. We received more than 300 donations from family, friends and strangers. One company, Rode, saw Daniel on the news and sent him some new equipment. Our wonderful rabbi, Rabbi Jason Weiner, gave a speech to our synagogue about us and made us feel supported and loved.

Multiple people gave us food for Shabbat and checked in on us. The Pico-Robertson community and broader Jewish community have been incredible. 

Daniel and I also received hundreds of kind messages. Multiple people gave us food for Shabbat and checked in on us. The Pico-Robertson community and broader Jewish community have been incredible. 

Two weeks after the burglary, I’m still feeling unsafe in my home and in L.A. It’s obvious that the crime is out of control here, and I don’t think it’ll get better anytime soon.

Being burglarized was an absolutely horrible experience. But at the same time, I can see how blessed we’ve been throughout this whole ordeal. 

I don’t know why the burglary happened, but I know that Hashem has a plan. Maybe one day I’ll figure out what the purpose of all this was. In the meantime, I’m acknowledging the good, and I’m eternally grateful for all the countless blessings in my life. 

To donate to the GoFundMe, please visit gofundme.com/f/rebuild-the-podcast-bus or email me at KylieOl@JewishJournal.com. Thank you.

Kylie Ora Lobell is the Community Editor of the Jewish Journal.