Last month 19-year-old Charlotte Anthony’s home was robbed. The stunned University of Washington student learned that someone had stolen her laptop, jewelry, and oddly enough, a pair of cheap pink sunglasses.

“What they were interested in shows their age group, taking cheap jewelry that only kids would like,” she said.

Anthony’s home was one of a string of burglaries to hit a Lake Hills neighborhood last month with robbers sneaking in through small openings, stealing numerous small electronics and other keepsakes.

The robberies in the vicinity of 148th Avenue Southeast and Southeast 16th Street underscore a larger trend of incidents in the Lake Hills area. Bellevue Police spokeswoman Officer Carla Iafrate said the area has seen at least 20 burglaries in the last few months.

Residents felt the incidents in their neighborhood, with at least three West Lake Hills homes robbed in less than three weeks, were committed by a group of kids, given the small areas suspects entered through and the stolen items.

Iafrate said five arrests have been made related to burglaries in the larger Lake Hills area. In addition, police arrested another individual who they suspect committed one burglary in October, and another on Feb. 14, with another possible suspect.

“All are juvenile suspects – high school age – that are still active, but we are constantly monitoring them and obtaining new information on their mischievous deeds,” Iafrate said of the suspects in the October, and Feb. 14 burglaries.

Anthony first learned her home on Southeast 15th Street had been robbed on the afternoon of Jan. 19 when she received a call from her mother about her laptop, which was missing from the home.

The robbers entered the home through a dog door, which has since been removed. They stole primarily easily accessible things such as laptops, but the suspects took some strange merchandise as well.

Anthony said the burglars took the sunglasses, and her Star of David necklace, but left much of a box of significantly more expensive jewelry.

The robbery has left Anthony, a University of Washington student, and her mother shaken.

“It’s really hard to sleep at night feeling that someone was in your room,” she said. “It’s created a lot of stress that we didn’t really need.”

Iafrate declined to release a police report related to the burglary of Anthony’s home because the case remains open.

The first of the robberies in the neighborhood occurred at one of Anthony’s neighbors homes, the owner of which did not want to be identified.

On Jan. 6, a female resident of a home on 144th Avenue Southeast, returned from a memorial service and immediately had a strange feeling. Her back gate was open and someone left foot prints on the door step.

As with Anthony’s case, there was no sign of forced entry. In this instance, the burglars came in through a sliver of a window on top of the kitchen sink.

“They had to be tall to clear the sink, but skinny with no hips to get through that window,” she said. “Honestly, we never thought of locking it before because we never thought anyone could actually fit through it.”

The woman said the burglars seemed rushed as they only grabbed things near the kitchen that were in plain sight. They took as much as they could stuff into her workout bag, which included an Xbox 360, and a brand new Kinect system.

Like Anthony, the owner of this home was startled by the burglary and has been significantly affected.

“The thing that is hard to believe but has been a real eye opener for a lot of us is that there was someone home in every house all around me when it happened – and for several of those houses it is quite easy to see into our yard or even our front room,” she said. “We are close to all of our neighbors and feel like we watch out for one another – but the reality is none of us spend much time, especially this time of year, looking out of our houses … we are all doing our thing in our homes.”

The robberies helped forge a renewed sense of camaraderie from these neighbors. They put together an e-mail list to talk about the crimes, and are organizing a community meeting to get to the bottom of things. Several individuals in the neighborhood took up patrolling the area at night, looking for suspicious individuals.

Sheila Allen, a neighbor whose home was not broken into, said vigilant neighbors cam help stem the tide of break-ins as they’ve all occurred in broad daylight.

“So far it’s all happened during the day when people have been at work,” she said. “The stay at home folk need to keep an eye out.”

Nat Levy can be reached at 425-453-4290.