Imagine the scene: it is Christmas Eve, you’ve had a busy day at work, you’ve come home, cooked and finally put your two excited toddlers to bed.
Wearily you trudge down to your apartment block’s basement, where each tenant has a storeroom, to retrieve the gifts which you have hidden there – and they have gone. Yes, some heartless thief has taken the Christmas gifts which you worked so hard to buy for your children.
What would you do?
In Alpignano [Torino] the victim of the burglary frantically drove around her town in the hope of finding an open store but the only places still trading at that hour were the all-night petrol stations.
She desperately looked for gifts in the shop attached to each one, until, at nearly 4 am, she met a Carabinieri patrol and was able to explain the situation to the officers.
They reported it to their captain, who, imagining the disappointment that would be written on the children’s faces a few hours later, decided to help the mother. He said that he would have hidden the toys in the basement storeroom, too.
The Carabinieri captain called the owner of a toyshop in nearby Giaveno and the shopkeeper agreed to come and open his store. Thus, although the thief has yet to be apprehended, two little girls of three and a half and two and a half had a happy Christmas morning after all.
