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Santa Cruz woman gets back stolen items in “Christmas miracle”

It is being called a “Christmas miracle” in Santa Cruz.

Averi Isabella Sha is a student at Cabrillo College, studying to go to nursing school.

She just bought a laptop, but one morning she woke up, went to her car, and discovered it was gone, along with the rest of her classwork.

“There were items that were not mine in my car. Soaking wet shirts,” Sha said. “I looked in my room and my bag wasn’t there. And my heart sank.”

Three weeks went by without much traction, until she got a message on Instagram from Karl Goldfield. Goldfield owns the RV recovered by police a few days earlier, just down the street from Sha’s home. Sha says Goldfield contacted her to see if any of the stolen items found inside his RV were hers. The laptop was there.

“He was like ‘I’ll be there in an hour’,” Sha said.

She says he showed up a the restaurant she works at to drop off her laptop. He said he was just about to leave for vacation, but was first able to give Sha that major holiday break.

“He didn’t have to return my stuff but he did. It just shows what a good person he is,” Sha said. “I did think it was a Christmas miracle.

In a Facebook post, Santa Cruz Police called their operation at the RV a “high-risk extraction.” They arrested two transients, Dimitri Dimock, 50, and Nathan Cooper, 26, for possession of stolen property.

But so many crimes this holiday season remain unsolved, in a series of porch piracies.

There was this brazen thief outside Salinas , playing with the dog before snatching the package and driving away.

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We also spoke with a person victimized in south Salinas. Mike, the homeowner, tells us this same suspect has stolen from other homes in the area.

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“A lot of people have seen the same guy, doing the same thing. Same car. Same everything.”

In the video you can see the suspect trail the USPS delivery truck. He hops out of his truck, approaches the front of the home with a red bag, and appears to leave with a package.

“I was sort of in disbelief that it happened. I had been reading about it, but I didn’t think it would happen to us,” Mike tells KION.

If you have information on either of these cases, call the Salinas Police Department or the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.

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