This is an open letter to a thief.

When you came into my yard and stole a truck tool box, you didn’t just steal a tool box, you stole a dream.

How’s that, you say? The tool box contained all the turkey hunting gear that was the property of a 76-year-old man fighting colon cancer. The day you took the tool box, he was at the VA hospital getting chemotherapy.

While struggling day by day, he holds onto a dream that he will get better and be able to do the thing he loves best, hunting.

You didn’t take away his will to live; his four children and grandchildren love him, and he holds that love in his heart to keep him going.

Unlike most people who hold a pity party when they are sick, after he has chemo, they remove the pump he carries for three days hooked up to a port in his arm, and he gets up at 6:30 and goes to work driving cars at an auction. That too keeps his mind occupied and moving until the next week when it all starts over again.

I don’t know what a thief thinks. I guess they just figure the homeowners’ insurance takes care of it. Wrong: the deductible takes up all the money to replace the items stolen.

Years ago when my children were small and I was pregnant with my fourth child, a thief who still lives in the neighborhood watched to see when I went to the doctor, broke in our home and stole a load of things. When I went to court for his trial he came up to me and told me I was wasting my time, his lawyer would get him off.

I sat in the courtroom on a hard bench, waiting for justice. My children didn’t sleep for weeks; they were afraid the thief would come back and kill them.

One would hope that when a teenager becomes an adult they would have the remorse to come to you and offer an apology. That doesn’t happen; the man still lives in the same house, on the same road where he lived as a teenager, but never had the fortitude to say to this family that he was sorry. Probably a thief doesn’t have any remorse for taking items that belong to someone else.

I thank God everyday for parents that taught me not to lie, or steal. I have never forgotten the one spanking that my dad gave me. He literally was a Tallman, that was his name, and he had hands the size of a tennis racket (that’s the way I remember them) and he spanked me only once, but I quickly learned never to talk back to my dad ever again.

Maybe if the thief had parents who took time to give their children rules to live by, the world would be a better place.

I have found wallets in the street with money in them, found the owner and gave the wallet with the money still in it. My morals tell me the money wasn’t money that I earned, so it wasn’t mine.

There are two characteristics in a human that I hate, a thief and a liar. Thanks for listening, I feel better already.

LeGay Saul

Fayette County, Ga.

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