Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The material side of Christmas for Amos Burger and his family was almost destroyed, but the other, more intangible, side of Christmas came through to save it.
Burger, who grew up in Sweet Home, is a petty officer at the U.S. Coast Guard in Portland, where he is a boarding officer and a coxswain. He is married to Kristina. They have two children, Adaira Jane, 4, and Taiden, 2.
They lived in Vancouver near Jantzen Beach, and on Dec. 19, a group of thieves broke into their home and stole all but four presents from under the family’s Christmas tree, along with other valuables.
“It was a Wednesday morning,” Amos Burger said. It was the end of a two-day shift. “I was getting ready to go home.”
At 7:30 a.m., he received a phone call from his wife telling him they had been robbed. He rushed home and found that the thieves had taken about 30 Christmas presents, an X-Box, the family laptop, parts of his sound system, a video camera and his wife’s purse and credit cards.
Some of the Christmas presents were personal and not really worth cash, Burger said.
His wife and children were home asleep upstairs in the townhouse when one of the thieves drilled a hole in the glass sliding back door, Burger said. The thief somehow lifted the door to get it open. The door had a wooden dowel in the track to keep it from being slid open.
The thief opened the front door to allow an unknown number of accomplices into the townhouse, Burger said.
They left behind some valuables, Burger said. “I kind of think they got spooked. They actually came back two more times, and we had to call the police.”
The experience prompted them to move to Salem this month, he said.
Burger said the Coast Guard transferred him to Portland about eight months ago. They had renter’s insurance while living at his previous post in Port Angeles, Wash., but hadn’t updated it.
His Christmas bonus had already been spent for Christmas, and though the Burgers canceled their credit cards almost immediately, the thieves managed to rack up some $700 in charges at Wal-Mart and gas stations before the cards got stopped. That left the family with no way to replace Christmas presents for the kids.
“We were in between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “All our accounts were frozen.”
Members of the Coast Guard started calling around, collected about $800 and gave it to the Burger family to help out. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office collected about $200.
With it, they purchased presents and a turkey, Burger said. “It was just amazing.”
“After we were on the news, we had people calling and saying, ‘We’re sorry for your loss.'”
Burger grew up in Cascadia and graduated from Sweet Home High School in 2001. Kristina grew up in Astoria. Living in Port Angeles wasn’t too different from home, but when they moved to Vancouver, they were in culture shock, Amos said.
In Sweet Home, Burger said, “you go to the grocery store and see a hundred people you know.”
It’s not that way in the big city, he said. It was a sad and happy way to find out that the big city also has people who care about people.
“To realize that (Christmas) was all gone, and you have no means,” Burger said. “Then to have your coworkers show up, it was really special to me, really amazing.”
“I appreciate the Coast Guard,” Kristina Burger said.