Indian Homes in Cupertino Neighborhood Terrorized By Burglaries

On September 4, Heena Desai attended a neighborhood watch orientation organized by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department to protect against home burglaries. Over the summer, burglars broke into at least two South Asian residences in her east Cupertino neighborhood Rancho Rinconada to specifically steal their jewelry.

Though she had precautionary measures like cameras and alarm systems, Desai was still worried about the safety of her own home given how easily burglars circumvented these deterrents in other homes. So at the orientation, she asked the sheriff multiple times for increased patrolling in her neighborhood. The sheriff told her that while increased patrolling at all times was not possible, officers could patrol the neighborhood if residents reported anything suspicious.

Two days later, burglars broke into Desai’s home when she and her husband Indra were visiting their daughter in Saratoga to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi. They stole jewelry worth more than $30,000.

Three South Asian homes, three robberies, one modus operandi

The Desais’ home was the third in a series of burglaries in South Asian homes in the Rancho Rinconada neighborhood over the summer. In all three incidents, the burglars broke through the glass back doors or patio doors, entered the master bedroom, raided the closets and cupboards for jewelry and made their exit in a matter of minutes.

The first two targets were Mudita Tiwari’s home on May 23, and Jayshri Yadwadkar’s home on May 30. Tiwari and Yadwadkar are single mothers who work as tech executives. In both cases, burglars broke into their homes in broad daylight when there was nobody at home.

The robbers stole more than $25000 worth of jewelry from Yadwadkar’s home, and designer handbags and more than $10,000 worth of jewelry from Tiwari’s. In both cases, their sons were the first people to discover the robberies when they got home in the afternoon after school while their mothers were still at work.

Given the similarities between the two incidents, Tiwari and Yadwadkar believe that the robbers carefully planned the attacks and potentially tracked their movements and schedules for days before the burglary.

In the Desais’ case, the theft took place in the evening, around 8:45 pm, when the couple were visiting their daughter in Saratoga. At around 9:13 pm, Indra Desai found out that there was an intruder at their home, through a security camera alert on his phone. They notified the police and by the time the family made their way over, the police were already there, but the robbers had already escaped.

“We are feeling very, very unsafe”

Traditionally in many South Asian families, jewelry – often made with gold – is not just a monetary asset, but has cultural, and familial worth. As heirlooms, they also hold sentimental value and so, people prefer keeping them at home instead of a safety deposit boxes in a bank. As a result, South Asian homes have become targets of jewelry theft in the United States.

Cases like these have been reported on the East Coast as well as the Bay Area . India Currents also reviewed screenshots shared by Yadwadkar from the neighborhood app NextDoor where multiple other South Asian residents of Cupertino have reported car break-ins, home burglaries and even a chain-snatching incident in Saratoga, south of Cupertino. Between May and July 2024, four Indian jewelry stores in the Bay Area saw smash-and-grab robberies.

Now, residents like Desai, Tiwari and Yadwadkar are concerned about their immediate security in Cupertino.

“I’ve lived in this neighborhood since 1998, my girls grew up here, and this neighborhood used to be one of the safest neighborhoods,” said Heena Desai. “But lately, especially after this incident of robbery at our place, we are feeling very, very unsafe.”

The fact that jewelry is the primary target is also making South Asian women in the neighborhood anxious about wearing jewelry.

“Things that I lost were heirlooms given to me by my grandfather, who’s no longer in this world, heirlooms given to me by my dad, who passed away from Covid… so there’s no way anybody can replace the value of that,” said Tiwari.

“Indian tradition is also about wearing certain things in certain parts of the season and it is so attached to the way we express ourselves as Indians in the community,” she added. “It just feels like, because we express ourselves by wearing certain assets or behaving in a certain way, we’re going to go ahead and target you.”

Yadwadkar echoed Tiwari: “I actually started wearing a jacket over my Indian clothes, just to camouflage it, and to not show that I’m Indian.”

What The Numbers Say

However, the numbers suggest that the number of burglaries are falling, and that Indians are not the only group that is falling victim to burglars. According to the statistics available on the City of Cupertino website, there have been 44 residential burglaries this year so far, compared to 69 in 2023, and 85 in 2022.

According to the West Valley Patrol division, 19% percent of the victims this year have been white, around 21% have been Indian, and 25% Asian. These numbers somewhat correlate with the population demographics for Cupertino, but underreporting could be a factor that obscures the true picture.

“We can always assume that there’s some sort of underreporting,” said Captain Neil Valenzuela, who is in charge of the West Valley Patrol Division. “Sometimes people feel like we’re not going to help them, or are not going to solve anything you know, but we still encourage people to let us know if something happens so we can do our best to try to figure out who did it.”

Residents’ reluctance to report burglaries stems from the perception that the police may be unlikely to successfully apprehend and prosecute the culprits. According to Valenzuela, the success rate for solving burglaries is less than 10% in Cupertino.

“Burglaries are a little bit hard to solve, because even if we do feel we have the right person, we can’t just tag them with the crime, we have to somehow link them to that robbery,” he said. “If we can somehow put that person there, inside that house with evidence, then we can charge them with that.”

In the absence of evidence like fingerprints, DNA, or clear images captured from security cameras, police charge suspects with possession of stolen property or other minor charges.

In his experience, said Captain Valenzuela, the burglars convert jewelry into gold, or send it overseas as soon as possible to get rid of any incriminating evidence. Even if the police zero in on a suspect, it is highly unlikely that they can recover the stolen items.

“I know some people are frustrated with this, and I can assure you that our detectives are doing everything we can, and our deputies care about the community,” said Valenzuela. “However, like I said, it’s a really hard crime to stumble onto or to catch it in progress. So most of the work has to be done afterwards or before by preventing it.”

Precautions are Key

Captain Valenzuela reiterated that residents can ask for additional patrols by contacting the Sheriff’s Office, and ask for a check around their property if they are out of town and worried about intruders.

He urged residents to set up ring cameras, alarm systems and shatter-proof films on their sliding doors as additional security measures, as well as set up a neighborhood watch.

“A good neighborhood watch, where neighbors keep an eye out for each other, that helps a lot,” he said. “That’s how we get really good information and good solid leads on cases.”

After the break-in at her house, Yadwadkar took the initiative to organize the September 4 neighborhood watch orientation with the Sheriff’s department; she is urging other residents to stay vigilant, share information and report any crimes. But she also believes that it should be the city’s responsibility to protect residents, and not the residents’.

“We live in very wealthy neighborhoods, we pay high taxes, we pay high rents and mortgages. On top of that, we install a couple of thousand dollars worth of security systems, then we invest in a monthly plan for security systems, and then on top of that, we have to set up neighborhood watches to take care of ourselves?” she asked.

“I definitely want some pressure on our mayor as well as the law enforcement.”

ALPR Could Be Part of the Solution?

Mayor Sheila Mohan agreed that burglaries are a problem in Cupertino but pointed out that the problem extends beyond Cupertino.

“It’s a regional problem,” she said. “Sunnyvale, Saratoga and Cupertino, we are unique in our own ways, but we have a lot of things in common, and home burglaries are something that all three cities have to contend with.”

She added that Cupertino regularly attends meetings with neighboring cities to exchange information and identify tangible interventions like the installation of Automatic License-Plate Reader Cameras – or ALPR cameras – in the city.

These cameras – also known as Flock cameras because of the company that manufactures them – sit atop light poles or stop signs and detect license plate numbers of cars from the image they capture. The camera then runs the license plate number through the database of stolen vehicles, missing persons and wanted vehicles, and if there is a match, deputies patrolling near the site of the camera receive an alert. This technology is already in use in other parts of the Bay Area , might help to identify burglars quicker as they often use stolen vehicles to escape from the scene of the crime.

Valenzuela said that within his jurisdiction, the city of Los Altos Hills is seeing a reduction in burglaries after the installation of ALPR cameras.

“We’ve recovered lots of stolen vehicles, handguns, solved cases involving burglaries, mail thefts and different kinds of crimes,” he said. “They [ALPR cameras] have been really instrumental.”

Mohan confirmed that on October 1, the city council approved the installation of fifteen ALPR cameras that will be set up at strategic locations in Cupertino. “The Sherrif’s Office, in conjunction with the city will develop a policy on how to implement it,” she said. “It’s not as easy as it sounds because there are privacy concerns that some groups have, some individuals have.”

The potential of the ALPR cameras is little consolation for victims like the Yadwadkar, Tiwari, and Desai families. They are still on edge about the possibility of another break-in.

“My neighbor was targeted two years ago,” said Tiwari. “They came two times, once to burglarize the home, and then a second time to take his car at night.”

Yadwadkar and Tiwari are concerned about the traumatic effects of home invasions on their sons, who were the first to discover the crimes in their homes.

“For the first two, three weeks, I would go to work and he would come home from school, and I would not stop texting him,” said Yadwadkar. “Can you close this? Can you close that? Make sure you don’t go out, or if you go out, close this! So you become over-conscious and you start overthinking.”

The Desais still feel a sense of anxiety every time they receive a notification on their phone, thinking it might be their ring camera detecting an intruder.

“Our home doesn’t feel like a home, it feels like a fortress,” said Indra Desai. “And you should never have to live in a place that feels like a fortress, and not a home right?”

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