A sign on the back of the door in the Jacobs Fitness Center men’s locker room reads, “Like your stuff? Lock your locker.” But recently, even the locks have not stopped break-ins.
In the past few months, Jacobs Fitness Center has had a string of thefts from the rented lockers on the lower level of the gym. Employees of the gym have not been able to conclusively find out how people are stealing from the rented lockers.
“The problem is, we’re not exactly sure how they’re doing it,” said Jocelyn Hill, the director of Recreational Sports and Fitness. “What we’ve seen has been pretty rare and the frequency has kind of jumped up a little bit.”
Megan Miraglia, who works at the front desk of the gym, said that someone is figuring out how to tamper with the locks.
There is no visible damage to the tampered lockers, and one possible explanation is that people are not closing the doors properly and someone is prying them open.
“We look at the locker, we can’t really tell if anyone is trying to use a crowbar of some sort, because they would damage the locker,” Hill said.
However, another scenario suggests that the thief is in possession of a master key, Hill said.
“Whoever this person is, they’re very clever. Because they wait for that person — you have to know that this individual has put stuff in that locker — because we’ve got a hundred and some lockers in there,” she said. “And if you had a key, to take the time to go through each and every one until you found the jackpot — hopefully someone would notice that you were doing something like that.”
The lockers most recently targeted are in the men’s locker room. They cost $65 per semester to rent and have built-in locks. The 8-year-old locks will be replaced over spring break at a cost of approximately $1,600, according to Hill.
“We bought those with the mindset that it’s very difficult to get into these just because of their design,” Hill said.
The fitness center has three types of lockers: mini-lockers with four-digit combinations similar to those in hotel safes, bring-your-own-lock day lockers and the $65 per semester ones.
“In my eyes, I just was buying security so I didn’t have to worry about it ever,” said Brian Galm, a junior in the Kogod School of Business, whose rented locker was broken into.
Galm’s credit and debit cards were stolen out of his wallet Feb. 15 and nearly $900 was fraudulently charged to his account, including a $300 purchase to the Best Buy in Tenleytown. He did not notice anything was missing until he coincidentally checked his bank account online.
Galm left his locker at approximately 2:15 p.m. and the Best Buy purchase was made at 2:45 p.m.
Miraglia said there’s a pattern to the thefts.
The thief “doesn’t take the entire wallet, only takes one or two credit cards,” she said. “It seems like it’s definitely the same person.”
The fitness center sent out an e-mail to locker renters offering “a friendly reminder in terms of locker use to insure the safety of your belongings.”
Suggestions made to renters were to always lock their lockers, shut their locker doors firmly and to turn the lock a few times to ensure the locker is completely secured.
The e-mail was not sent to the student body at large and doesn’t mention any thefts.
Galm does not remember receiving the e-mail, but he admits he could have deleted it.
“A lot of people ignore e-mails,” he said.
In addition to the e-mail, Hill said signs were placed in the locker room reminding people to lock their belongings. The signage does not mention thefts either.
“It’s not going to say, ‘Hey, we’ve been getting a lot of thefts,’ but it’ll be more positive,” she said.
Galm said the signs should mention theft.
“You shouldn’t be ignorant to it; it actually is occurring,” he said.
Miraglia added that people aren’t being warned.
“It doesn’t seem like a whole lot of action has been taken,” she said. “I can’t say that anything out of the ordinary has been done.”
Hill is looking to install security cameras around the fitness center, but that won’t happen for a few months.
“People are getting even more sophisticated,” Hill said. “I don’t know what else is out there to try.”
You can reach this staff writer at sdazio@theeagleonline.com.
