The police warn about it all the time, hol­i­days seem to bring out the thieves in droves. Hawaii is no excep­tion and I found out the hard way on July 3 when our house was bur­glar­ized in broad day­light. Bad news — all of my cam­eras and jew­el­ry were stolen.

Shelf where the cam­eras used to be.

Good news. The com­put­er and hard dri­ves weren’t tak­en and the film and all my archival doc­u­ments and years of research remain intact.

These binders alone rep­re­sent years of research.

I am remind­ed of a North­ern Expo­sure episode where Mar­i­lyn Whirl­wind tells a sto­ry about a lucky sit­u­a­tion turn­ing unlucky and then lucky again. See tran­script of sto­ry here.

Let’s hope you nev­er have to fill out one of these.

I had a lit­tle mourn­ing ses­sion for each item I list­ed in the Police Report, espe­cial­ly pieces of jew­el­ry that my grand­moth­er had giv­en me.  But as I was writ­ing that up, friends from all over were respond­ing to my Face­book post about the inci­dent, offer­ing help, com­fort, loans of cam­era equip­ment, etc.  Read­ing those posts I real­ized just how lucky I was.

But how to pre­vent future loss­es?  Old fash­ioned safes might pro­tect jew­el­ry and cam­eras in the future, but what about those archival docs and film footage?  Is cloud tech­nol­o­gy a prac­ti­cal solu­tion?  Any­one have expe­ri­ence using tech­nol­o­gy to safe guard pre­cious pho­tographs or doc­u­ments?  Let’s hear your story.