lived in Van for 25+ years, had my car broken into dozens of time, house 3x...I work hard buy my toys, have a nice house, kept it safe with alarms, draw the curtains protect the valuables inside, but a dedicated pro will have skills and tools. After the 2nd time I installed a surveillance system that has motion sensitve cameras in the house, when the system is tripped, it starts taking pics/video...they are all pin hole or well hidden...had nice clear shots of faces after they smashed the back door, spent close to 30 minutes in the house, pics of them going room to room, idiots parked a car in the lane, got pics of that too. Insurance covered everything, what pissed me off most is I had a puppy in a crate, the scum bags did not take the dog, but kicked the crate and it has traumatized the poor beast her whole life... I gave the police a copy of the everything and they caught the two...SPCA will not pursue bcuz the dog was not injured...they won't do time as our legal system lacks...easy to set this up on your own if you want...best place to hide things...kids rooms and bathrooms...they checked the freezers, ransacked all the rooms except my kids and the washrooms...the kicker, the dudes continued to hit homes in the hood, neighbour had the spare keys to his cars stolen...fyi, expensive to replace so hide them well...they were arrested at a construction site less than a block away...they were drywallers, the angriest of all the trades...with long records of B+E's. The lesson to learn is don't brag about what you have, you never know who is listening to you while you sit at the local Starbucks talking about when your leaving on vacation...my break in took place mid day, and I was not on vacation. If you hire a contractor to do work, demand that all staff have a Back Check done...cost $20, price of letting a scum bag in your house... Set up a system like I did, people only regard alarms as a noise and they won't take action to see whats going on...