Help my Grandma and me get back what was stolen from us!

Hi, my name is Nicholas and I am trying to raise money because after coming back to our apartment that was flooded 3 years ago, we found out that we were robbed! They came into my grandma's apartment and took a bunch of electronics and meaningful stuff from me and my grandma!

To give a little backstory, three years ago, my grandma and I got kicked out of our Section 8 apartment in Elizabeth because the entire apartment complex got flooded by Hurricane Ida. My aunt, my grandma, and I were displaced from our apartment and we didn’t know where we were going to go. A few days later, they had a hurricane relief event at one of the local high schools nearby. We went, and my grandma signed us up so they could put us in another apartment as quickly as possible. After two and a half months of bouncing from different hotels, they finally found an apartment for us. Unfortunately, the apartment was in Rahway, which is another city not too close to where we originally were. When we got there, we found out that they gave us a one-bedroom apartment. So for the next three years, the three of us had to live in a little one-bedroom apartment (not any larger than any normal-sized living room). Both of my aunts slept on air mattresses, and I slept on a mattress on the floor. We didn’t buy any furniture for that apartment because we kept hoping that we were going to go back soon. “We have to keep waiting, there’s no point in stopping now,” my grandma said after one year of waiting and living uncomfortably. The living conditions in that apartment were awful as well; the air conditioner always broke down, which both gave cool and hot air, the bathroom walls ran with a sticky brown paint because they didn’t paint the walls well, and almost half the stuff in that apartment broke. Every time we tried to tell the building manager to come and fix something, it would take them 3-4 weeks before they finally came, and we had to nag them constantly about it on top of that. Backtrack to when we were originally kicked out; the firefighter who was telling everyone to get out told us that it was only going to be one week so that they could drain the water and then we could go back. My grandma, my aunt, and I packed light because we thought we were going to be away for only a few days at most. Fast forward three years, and my grandma finally gets the call that we can move back to our apartment. At this point, we’re ecstatic to just go back and have all of our old stuff. Yesterday was the first time we officially walked back into the apartment.

*Side note (it’s just my grandma and me now because my aunt went back to her home country for a while). My uncle took us to the apartment and came with us to help move some stuff in. I started to get emotional because I was so happy that my life was finally going back to normal. I immediately put down my stuff and ran into my room to find it like this:

This was my computer setup that I had everything clean and tidy when I left the apartment three years ago. My heart dropped, and I started to notice what was missing. After checking the whole room frantically, looking for what was missing, I noticed that I was missing: 1. My PlayStation 4, 2. One of my computer monitors, 3. My iPad, 4. My streaming service device that made my TV into a smart TV, 5. My headphones, 6. Some rings and jewelry that I bought, 7. My gaming chair, and 8. The most important thing, my mom’s laptop. This was important to me because my mom passed away 5 years ago when I was in high school. She was truly my best friend and the best mom anyone could ask for. She used to save all of our pictures that we took from 2012-2019 on that laptop. Now I’ve lost all those pictures and all the memories that were in that laptop because someone decided to take advantage of the situation that we were in and robbed us. After realizing what was all lost, I yelled for my grandma and told her that we got robbed. Then she started looking carefully around the apartment and noticed that her expensive watch that she kept from her late husband was missing. She noticed a few pieces of her jewelry set were missing as well and some other things that weren’t too important. After talking with her, I went back to my room to check my closet, and what I found was horrifying. They rummaged through my closet and took everything that they thought they could sell. What hurts me the most is they opened up a box which had the ashes of my mother. To give a little context, when they gave us the box from the funeral home of my mom’s ashes, I told everyone I could hold onto it until we knew where to spread the ashes. Eventually, time flew by, and I put the box in a little corner in my closet where it was safe. I found it opened up, turned sideways on the floor. I was so scared that the ashes were taken, but they were still placed in the fully closed bag that was in the box. I honestly can’t believe that after all this time of hardship, we still have to face another major problem because of that hurricane 3 years ago. If I knew that it was going to take three years for us to get back, I would’ve definitely taken all the things that were stolen from me, but unfortunately, we were told it was only going to be a few days. I thought it was a Christmas miracle that my grandma and I get to come back, but now I realize that miracles don’t exist, only coincidences.

Around $3,000 of electronics and personal items combined was taken from my grandma and me. I’m asking for $400 so we could at least buy some of the most important things back. I wasn’t expecting to write this much, but I needed you as a reader to get the full context of what the last three years have been for me and my close family. It’s been really mentally and emotionally draining for me, but especially for my grandma. No 80-year-old woman should have to go through these series of events at her age; she needs to be resting, and she has been constantly stressed for the past three years. If you could contribute anything, my grandma and I would be really grateful, and we are going to use it to get back some of the things that were stolen. The personal family items like my grandpa’s watch and my mom’s laptop we can never get back, and I hope that those robbers know that they have stolen from a good family that only ever wanted to go back to their apartment and finally rest. Thank you for reading all the way until the end if you did! Again, any contribution would mean the world to us, and my grandma and I would greatly appreciate it.

After cleaning my room up a bit, this is what my trash looked like. It’s filled with mostly empty boxes and junk that the robbers left in my room when they trashed my room. That was just my room, for the apartment we are throwing out whole garbage bags!