MEL TOADVINE Bobbie Slanker with her cat, Fluffy. Slanker’s Lehigh home was robbed in February and she is upset because a Purple Heart and other military items were stolen.

An 88-year-old Lehigh woman is still recovering not only from a break-in at her home, but from falling two weeks ago.

Bobbie Slanker had been away for a while and when she returned home in February and opened the front door of her house, she said, and everything had been ransacked and the furniture all turned around and thieves had made off with between $20,000 to $25,000 worth of her things.

Those things stolen on the weekend of Feb. 26 included a wide-screen TV, a computer, and a lot of cherished items that included military ribbons and decorations. One was a purple heart that belonged to her late brother-in-law and all the ribbons that her late husband had acquired when he was in intelligence in the U.S. Military.

“It was an awful scare when I opened the door and saw everything strewn throughout the house,” Slanker said.

“It really has hurt that the military ribbons and the Purple Heart were taken. I had treasured them so much,” she said.

In addition, thieves who she believes broke in through a window, stole thousands of dollars of jewelry, much of it gold, including an antique gold watch and chain that had belonged to her husband’s father. All of her jewelry, collected throughout the years, much of it gold, was also taken.

“The watch was very old and I have no idea how much it was worth, but it was beautiful with the gold,” she said. “It had a lot of sentimental value to me.”

Even her pet cat, seven-year-old Fluffy, may have been kicked by the robbers, Slanker said.

“When I came back, she was limping and my friends say they think the robbers kicked her when they tore up everything in the house.

George Knight was her late brother-in-law who received a Purple Heart for his service in war. He had lived with Slanker and her late husband, Frank. She said he moved in with his brother when his wife died. That was when Slanker and her husband lived in Richmond, Va.

“I am still finding out that things I go to look for are missing. I really have no idea about all the things they took,” she said.

“They even took a paper shredder,” she said.

Slanker is especially worried because they took her income tax papers and much of the items in her mailbox.

But she thinks the thieves could be found because a woman, she said, out west called her and said she had the addresses of where they lived.

“She told me they were attempting to buy an I-Pad and other things on the Internet and she was able to get their true identity.

“But the Sheriff’s Office people tell me the case is closed,” she said. Slanker also believes that her insurance company is not treating her right with coming up with what the items were worth that were taken. Friends have told her she should contact a lawyer because many insurance firms try to not pay what they are supposed to pay out to their own clients.

“My credit cards were stolen, my passport is gone, oh, and I can’t even remember everything that is missing. I itemized what I thought for the lady deputy who came here and took fingerprints,” Slanker said.

“Oh, and my husband had been a photographer and he owned lots of equipment, cameras and lenses and they were worth something today. They are also gone,” she said.

“I felt so violated when I discovered what had happened,” she said. A friend and previous health caretaker, Joann Gary, helped her to get the house back in order. She is a good friend,” Slanker said.

Slanker will be 89 in July and she said she has had to come to realize that the things taken “were only stuff,” and many material things can be replaced, like the big screen TV and computer.

“But the Purple Heart and other military ribbons are gone and they cannot be replaced and that hurts me a lot,” she said. She even asked that if anyone knows about the theft, that they contact the Sheriff’s Office and hopefully, the thieves would mail the military items to the Sheriff’s Office in Lehigh.

“Those items were so dear to me and that is what is hard to take, that thieves would take such personal things,” she said.

Slanker has been active in Lehigh for many years. She worked up north, she said for years, in the educational administrational field.

“After several visits to the Sheriff’s Office, they finally told me the case was closed. And that upsets me,” Slanker said.

Her home is not isolated in an area populated with woods. There are homes all around her, but none of her neighbors, she said, heard or noticed anything happening that weekend.

Since the break-in, Slanker has installed a detection alarm system. She has also bought a necklace with a button on it that will bring help if she pushes it.

When she first got it, she had gone to bed with it on and somehow, she said, it had twisted and the button got pushed, and all at once I heard all this commotion at my front door.

“It was the medics and law enforcement that had been dispatched. I told them I was sorry, but they said not to worry about it,” Slanker said.

She only wishes her cat could speak because she is so friendly, she said, that he probably went up to the thieves to be petted and they kicked him away.

“I love this cat and she means so much to me. I am glad they didn’t take her or kill her,” she said.

If anyone has any information about this break-in that occurred in February, around the 26th, she hopes they will contact the Sheriff’s Office.

“This has never happened to me before. It was really awful,” she said.