David Lucas admits that he is a light sleeper.
     After waking up on a recent Sunday at 5:45 a.m. after the wrath of Hurricane Ike, Lucas looked out his back porch to survey any potential storm damage.
     “I was looking to see if there were any tree limbs knocked down from the wind while drinking my morning coffee,” Lucas says. “The door to the shed was open, and I thought it might have been from the raccoons. When I saw an empty air conditioning box outside, I knew it wasn’t a raccoon.”
     Lucas says that despite hurricane conditions and his 15-foot tall security lights, thieves managed to break into his shed and stole about $500 worth of gear from his storage shed.
     “They drove up from the alley where my neighbors couldn’t see them,” Lucas says. “It had to be a small pick-up because I could see the tire marks in the alley. They had to have some gall.”
     Lucas called the police about 6:20 p.m. at the Southwest Patrol Division.
     “Since it wasn’t an emergency I called the substation,” Lucas says. “But they told me to call 911 because they couldn’t send anyone there without being dispatched.”
     The police showed up about an hour later.
     Lucas says he will look for some of his things at pawnshops around Oak Cliff and even some of the suburb pawnshops in Duncanville.
     “If they use my stuff for their own use, then God bless ‘em,” Lucas says. “If they are using them to pawn and are addicts then I feel sorry for them.”
     Dallas Police Sr. Cpl Eddie Crawford says sometimes it is a matter of just being plain unlucky.
     “Why he was targeted is anyone’s guess,” Crawford says. “People that want things go and steal them. Lawn equipment is a pretty hot commodity for the obvious reasons, especially for this time of the year.”
     Crawford says it was smart that Lucas took the time to install security lights at his house, but that he might have benefitted from something that makes a little more noise, like a dog.
     It didn’t surprise Crawford that the criminals used the cover of Hurricane Ike. Crooks are out there, he says, no matter what the weather conditions are like.