Cougar Mountain residents believe that a very sneaky thief is following behind postal carriers after a series of suspicious thefts took place in the Issaquah neighborhood on Aug. 13.

Lauren Steele of Northwest Pine Cone Drive was having a typical Saturday afternoon with her family on Aug. 13. After taking her three kids for a bike ride and tossing a football around in the yard, she had put her 3-year-old son down for a nap and was upstairs getting ready for a date night with her husband. The whole family was eagerly awaiting two care packages from the children’s grandmother in North Carolina that they had been tracking and knew were supposed to arrive that day.

Around 3 p.m., Steele thought she heard the mailman in the driveway, but figured that she would collect the package when the babysitter arrived. However, when the Steele’s babysitter arrived at 4 p.m., she reported not seeing any box on the front step. All family members, including the Great Dane, had been home all afternoon.

Upon tracking the packages online, the Steeles found that the boxes had actually been delivered at 3 p.m. that day, and realized that the mailman had not rung the doorbell. The question was, where were the packages now?

“It never occurred to me it was stolen,” Steele said. “I kept thinking it was delivered to the wrong address.”

It was when Steele received a Facebook message from a woman who had discovered the family’s empty packages around 4 p.m. in a ditch near the Open Window School in Bellevue — over 2.5 miles away — that Steele understood what had happened; the packages had been stolen right from the front doorstep.

Along with the Steeles’ boxes was an opened package of baby clothing that had been stolen from neighbors on Pine View Drive Northwest at the same time of the day. Additionally, a woman in north Issaquah reported on neighborhood social website NextDoor that she had also had a package stolen within one minute of delivery around 2:30 p.m. Like the postal service employee, the UPS delivery person had neither rung the doorbell nor knocked.

From talking to the other theft victims, who could pinpoint practically the moment their goods were taken, Steele realized an even scarier fact — that the thieves “must have been following closely behind” the mailman and quickly swooped in to nab the packages.

It would only make sense that the crimes were by postal stalkers, Steele said, because it is quite a project just to get to the neighborhood. Northwest Pine Cone Drive is tucked away in the trees at the top of a hill that can only be accessed by a steep, winding road — not the kind of place thieves would be wandering around randomly. Steele also noted that the family’s long, shared driveway would be risky for a criminal to access, unless the person had already observed that no one had answered the door and the coast was clear.

Steele’s mother had sent the kids a host of back-to-school treats, including personally monogrammed backpacks and a monogrammed Star Wars lunchbox, new clothing and a handmade Nativity to be put away for Christmas.

“It burns me up,” Steele said. “Emotionally, I feel violated. They weren’t things that were valuable [financially].”

Never before, even when living in Washington, D.C., did the Steeles find themselves the target of this sort of crime. The revelation that their seemingly peaceful, tucked-away neighborhood is a place where criminals stalk postal carriers has the entire family wondering if Issaquah was the best location to buy a home.

“We moved from downtown Bellevue … to have space for our children to run around, and we get things stolen in broad daylight,” Steele said.

The Steeles used to feel safe in their home, but now they live in fear of new crimes, as evidenced by the fact that they installed a security camera on their doorstep the weekend following the theft.

“Every time the dog barks, my 6-year-old goes to the door to see if it’s a criminal,” Steele said.

U.S. postal workers told Steele that theft has become a major problem in the community. She doesn’t know what is causing the upsurge, but she suspects development along Newport Way Northwest, which she said has made traffic a nightmare, may have something to do with it.

The biggest problem, however, according to Steele, is that postal workers are no longer ringing doorbells. Steele called this “infuriating,” emphasizing that had the mailman just rung the doorbell or knocked, the entire theft could have been avoided.

The unfortunate experience has the family disheartened with the community.

“My mom was crying on the phone … it’s a bunch of stuff she was collecting and she wanted to see what [the kids] thought,” Steele said. “It’s a heartbreaking society we live in, where people steal care packages from grandma.”