Each year, we give our local trash collectors a Christmas card with a small gift inside, usually $10. This year, because the guys have been exceptionally nice to our dog -- throwing him doggie treats whenever he's outside when they arrive -- we decided to bump it up to $20.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up Monday morning, looked out the window, and saw that the card I'd carefully taped to the garbage-can lid was missing.

At first I thought it had blown off during the night -- high winds combined with frigid temperatures would probably be enough to defeat the clear packing tape I'd used.

This year's card was in a white envelope, which would be hard to find on our snow-covered lawn. So I recruited my wife, her brother (who's in from Albuquerque for the holidays), and the three kids to search for it.

Just as I was kicking myself for not doing what my neighbor had done -- tying the card to the handle of his garbage can with a ribbon -- I noticed that his card wasn't there either. The ribbon was there, but the card wasn't.

That's when it hit me: The gifts to the garbage men hadn't blown away. They'd been stolen.

My brother in law, still groggy from the two-hour time shift, said he'd seen something unusual late Sunday night. A car had pulled into our cul-de-sac, but cut its lights as it got near our driveway. And if that wasn't strange enough, the driver had gone through the cul-de-sac clockwise, whereas cars typically come through counterclockwise. Of course that makes perfect sense if the goal was to steal the cash intended for the trash collectors. By driving through from the left side of the street, he'd be able to reach out from his driver's-side window to snatch the card without having to get out of his car.

I pulled out another Christmas card, put another $20 into it, and hand-delivered it to the trash collectors when they came around two hours later. When I told them about the thefts, they already knew all about it. Not only that, they knew who'd done it: a disgruntled former trash collector who'd been fired sometime before Christmas last year. This was the second year he'd made the rounds, stealing gifts intended for his former coworkers.

You can see how it would be a lucrative crime spree: Hit 100 houses, stealing an average of $10 from each, and you've got $1,000 for a night's work. It would be easy for a guy who not only knows the neighborhoods, but knows the garbage collectors' routes as well.

What I can't imagine is sinking low enough that this would seem like a reasonable idea. Not only are you stealing from the people whose houses you used to pull up to every week as a trash collector, but you're stealing Christmas presents from guys you worked with five days a week, year in and year out.

There's a serious pathology at work there.

Tags: christmas , crime , society