Student speaks of her devastation after burglars steal degree work from her Westcliff home

8:00am Wednesday 2nd January 2013 in Echo News By Emma Thomas

Student speaks of her devastation after burglars steal degree work from her Westcliff home Student speaks of her devastation after burglars steal degree work from her Westcliff home

A STUDENT has been left devastated after years of work towards her degree was stolen after a burglary.

Tracey Tremain, 43, returned home on Saturday, December 29 to find the the front door of her house in Fairview Drive, Westcliff, had been forced open.

Her laptop and backup memory stick with all of her work for her degree in social work had been taken along with hers and her daughter’s jewellery.

She said: “I think I disturbed them when I came in.

“The front door had been jemmied open. All my late mother’s jewellery has gone, I’m quite upset about that. They emptied the contents of mine and my daughter’s jewellery boxes into a pillowcase and took it.

Tracey is a former Shoebury PCSO. She resigned from Essex Police three-and-a-half years ago to study full-time for a degree with a view entering the child protection profession.

She added: “The laptop and memory stick are just so precious to me, I have hit so many hurdles with this degree and now this has happened on top.

“I usually take the memory stick out. I just want it back.”

A forensic examination was carried out as were house-to-house enquiries.

Investigating Officer, DC Chris Martin, said: "The laptop had a silver ‘C’ on the front. Plugged into it was a red-and-black memory stick. Both the computer and stick contain vital work, crucial to her degree. This work is a product of years of work and has left her devastated. The memory stick is of limited value to anyone else and we would appeal to the burglar’s better nature to return it as well as the laptop and jewellery.”

Anyone with information in connection with this burglary, which happened between 5pm and 6.15pm, is urged to contact detectives at Southend police station on 101.

Comments(7)

ccd says...
8:32am Wed 2 Jan 13

Normally my first thought with these stories is 'Well you have a safe backup don't you'? But in this instance she had taken backups but was just very unlucky to have left it at the same place as the laptop.
As someone who is often called upon to recover lost data, take it from me. If your data is important, back it up and keep the backup somewhere else - a friends house or online (but make sure online isn't your only copy, the cloud is risky despite what marketeers will tell you).
Anyway, hope she manages to get either the laptop or memory stick back.

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Brunning999 says...
9:02am Wed 2 Jan 13

I feel for her she is of an age where achieving a degree is special.

I admire the fact that she has left her previous dead end job as a PCSO and she is trying to enhance her way of life.

It is just a shame that her time spent as a PCSO did not educate her enough to relise that we now live in an area full of sh it bags and extra security is necessary.

It is important to realise that every time you leave home that you have taken every reasonable precaution as wishing you had after is no good.

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InTheKnowOk says...
10:17am Wed 2 Jan 13

Gutting to have this happen .. Even worse knowing the scum who did it won't get caught. ..

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emcee says...
11:54am Wed 2 Jan 13

No point in having a backup if you are not going to keep the backup in a safe place. She may have "usually" taken the stick out of the laptop but she did not on this occassion. Therefore, this is no excuse for its loss. If work was that important it should have been second nature to ensure the backup was safe otherwise what is the point. For the most important data a minimum of two backups (I keep three) should be in order. This lady is unfortunate to be a victim of such a crime but the loss of her data was ultimately her own fault.
We hear of similar situations so many times yet nobody seems to learn lessons from other peoples lack of common sense. I have said it before and I will say it again, hardware can be replaced, important data cannot. Guard it with your life.

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andy:) says...
2:07pm Wed 2 Jan 13

There are plenty of companies offering free online cloud backup space of about 5-10Gb such as OpenDrive, SkyDrive, etc. its easy to set it up so all your files are sync'ed/duplicated online, it really is foolish not to backup important docs after all hard drives dont last indefinately, they WILL fail at some point.

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ccd says...
2:34pm Wed 2 Jan 13

andy:) wrote:
There are plenty of companies offering free online cloud backup space of about 5-10Gb such as OpenDrive, SkyDrive, etc. its easy to set it up so all your files are sync'ed/duplicated online, it really is foolish not to backup important docs after all hard drives dont last indefinately, they WILL fail at some point.
But make sure it's not your only backup - these companies that offer free services have no guarantees and you may well get burned when you find they;ve lost your data. For sure, use SkyDrive etc BUT also keep a copy on a USB stick or external hard drive and keep that at another location.

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Carnabackable says...
8:07am Thu 3 Jan 13

When I learnt about electronics, it became embedded in my memory, in my brain.....

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