When Kim Nguyen arrived home on a Friday afternoon last November, all she wanted was to relax after work. But when she arrived at her room upstairs she noted something was wrong. It was a mess: IDs, papers, documents all over the place. Jewels and money were gone including $60 she had in a Buddha statue. Her computer was left untouched, just sitting on her bed.
Nguyen’s family owns the Pholicious Vietnamese restaurant, at the corner of Somerset and Booth streets. Her story is just one of several in Ottawa’s Asian restaurant business.
Since last November, 19 homes have been invaded and robbed, for a total of more than $1 million in losses, according to the police. The robbers focus on Asian restaurant owners because of their long hours and habit of keeping cash, gold, and jewelry at home, police says.
“It's very rare that we see targeted break-ins like that. Usually when these offences are targeted they are against business and not peoples’ homes,” says Ottawa police Staff Sgt. Kal Ghadban, head of the break-and-enter unit.
“(The robbers) are doing a bit of homework on who the person is, when they are home and when they’re not,” he says “When they go in there’s a substantial loss so they know ahead of time that this person is likely to have money and jewelry.”
Nguyen has the same impression.
“We think we were monitored. They seemed to know exactly when we wouldn’t be home. Because our restaurant is family owned, we leave early in the morning and only come home late at night,” she says. “Maybe it’s just a flashback now, but we think we saw suspicious cars parked in our street before the robbery.”
Luckily for the Nguyens, they didn’t keep a lot of cash at home. But they still suffered a substantial loss, she says. One of her friends was not so lucky.
“I have a friend, her family lost quite a bit of money. They, like a lot of restaurant people, keep their tip cash at home. They lost around $60,000 in cash,” she says.
The material loss was not the only issue for Nguyen.
“What bothered us the most was that our family was being violated. A stranger came into our house and went through our things,” she says. “For a week it was really rough, we were very scared.”
The police are still investigating, but they are facing some road blocks, according to Ghadban.
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“We haven’t had many people come forward with information, if any,” Ghadban says. “With this many (break-ins) there has to be someone who saw something. That’s the biggest hurdle for us now, to get witnesses. We need for someone to come to us with information.”
When the break-ins started, the police contacted the Chinatown BIA to help get the word out. However, the BIA decided to stop co-operating after the latest series of break-ins.
“Last time when we spoke to the media about this issue, more people were targeted. The BIA will not comment on it,” said a member of the BIA who didn’t want to identify herself.
Peter So, chairman of the BIA, and also a victim of a break-in, confirmed the new policy.
“We don’t want to scare people. (The robbers) will make a mistake and get caught, the BIA will not get involved anymore,” he says.
At least some Chinatown business owners don’t seem overly concerned about the home invasions.
My Hang, owner of the Vietnamese Submarine, says in Vietnamese, translated by her daughter Phung La, that she heard about the invasions but is not worried.
She says she trusts her alarm system and doesn’t keep cash at home.
Nguyen says her family will be more careful in the future.
“We had an alarm system for five years, but the company was not that great so we just cancelled it. Then this happened and we got it back up right away,” Nguyen says.