At 1,236 dollars, it was a class two misdemeanor. I had known this since month four. I had sent the first written request to Karen in month two, before the camera was installed, a polite, direct letter delivered by hand, asking her to stop taking my wood and offering to sell her seasoned oak at a fair rate. She had responded verbally at my door, saying she would certainly stop, and that she appreciated my patience. The wood continued disappearing.
The second written request in month five was a certified letter. I had consulted with our attorney Leonard by that point, and he had reviewed the camera footage and the documentation log, and had said, with the specific clarity of a man who has been practicing rural property law for 31 years, that I had a theft case that was as well documented as any he had seen. He had also said that I had several options for how to proceed and that the options I chose would affect the outcome and the relationship with my neighbor and that I should think carefully about what outcome I wanted before proceeding. I had thought carefully. What I wanted was the theft to stop, not a prosecution, not a financial judgment, not a prolonged legal dispute, the theft to stop and some acknowledgement that it had happened.
If Karen had come to my door in month two and said, "I'm sorry, I took your wood. Here is what I owe you." I would have accepted that and considered the matter closed. That was still what I wanted. What I had received instead across 11 months was continued theft punctuated by denials, reframings, and the specific institutional escalation of a woman who understood how to use community processes as a defensive tool.
In month six, Karen had filed a complaint with the HOA board alleging that my trail camera was a privacy violation. The board had reviewed the complaint, reviewed Colorado camera law, and dismissed it. The camera was on my property, facing my property, and its documentation of Karen reaching over my fence to take my wood was documentation of activity on my property. In month eight, Karen had appeared at the HOA board meeting and described the ongoing situation as a true misunderstanding about resource sharing in rural communities. She had brought a presentation.
She had cited community sharing literature. She had characterized my documentation log as evidence of a litigious mindset that was inconsistent with the spirit of the Ridgecrest Commons community. The board president, a retired contractor named Marcus Webb, had reviewed my camera footage before the meeting. He had seen 412 pieces of wood leaving my property over 8 months. He had listened to Karen's presentation and then had asked her directly and without particular tone whether she had taken wood from my wood pile without permission.
She had said she had borrowed wood as a neighbor in good faith and that the characterization of borrowing as theft was a matter of perspective. Marcus had said that $1,000 of borrowed material that had not been returned or compensated for was the Colorado statutory definition of theft regardless of perspective.