Dear Editor

This letter is being written to you in order to express the frustration, anger and complete helplessness that myself, along with other good friends of the victim feels in regards to the unfortunate incident that happened sometime early in June of 2008.

Someone entered into the home of Valerie Buskirk without her knowledge and committed a crime by the theft of her 2 security safes that were hidden in her home. Authorities were immediately notified upon the discovery of the theft. The contents of the safes held cherished mementos that can never be replaced in addition to other valuables. As of this letter, to our knowledge this crime hasn’t been viewed in publications such as this newspaper.

Now anyone who knows Valerie Buskirk knows how hard she has worked over the past 20 + years in Burnett County. And also knows that she is a kind, loving, wonderful person who would do anything for anyone in need. Throughout the years Val has managed to scrimp and save enough money to the point where she was able to purchase her own home this past year. And we can all attest at some point in time the great joy and pride we felt when we were able to purchase something of value. For all who know and love Val know that this accomplishment was hard earned.

So although this crime may never be solved – the frustration comes with the fact of not knowing if all attempts were made to solve it. There are several issues and/or actions that one would think would automatically be done such as:

• There were no fingerprints taken immediately after the theft had been discovered and a report was made.

• There was nothing else removed from the home except for the safes. So this would narrow the suspects down quite a bit.

• All parties that have access to the home were not questioned in person.

• People who DO NOT have access directly to the home were personally questioned

This doesn’t make sense????

Val has had to contact the authorities on a daily basis to be a police report and still contacts them to ask if there are any additional leads – but it seems little and/or no progress is made. Granted to some,

they may think this is “no big deal”, but never-the-less it is a crime and should be treated with 100% effort, just like any other crime. We realize that this is a small rural community, but that doesn’t make it right to focus on bigger issues and not give the same attention to the smaller ones.

So in closing, our hearts go out to Val for her loss, and again we may never find out who did this terrible crime. It would be less frustrating to know why certain procedures were not taken and information was not conveyed to the victim on a regular basis.

Respectfully Submitted,

Good Friends of Valerie Buskirk