Pill Thieves Target Open Houses Across Mass.
BOSTON (CBS) - Sharon-based real estate agent David Wluka has been selling houses for almost 40 years. Over the past few of those years, he's seen a recurring problem get worse at some open houses.
"It was at the end of the day, I was by myself, it was a two-story house," he recalled for WBZ. "And a young woman came with a baby on her arm, in a carrier, and she said, 'Do you mind if I just put the baby down and run upstairs?'"
She was in and out, Wluka says, the only person to see the house alone.
"The next day I got a call from the homeowner that there were some pills missing from the medicine cabinet," he says. "This is the world we live in."
Realtors statewide - and beyond - are reporting a lot of the same thing. Their open houses end up attracting drug addicts, some of whom try to steal the sellers' prescription pills.
"We have had people going into houses actually going through medicine cabinets," explained Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey. He was speaking at a Tuesday news conference to unveil what authorities and advocates hope will be a partial solution to the problem in the form of small, resealable plastic bags.
In Norfolk County, real estate agents will soon start handing them out to homeowners to clean out their prescriptions before they host an open house.
"We're doing what we can," DA Morrissey added, "but it comes down to [this]: we know that people have easy access to drugs."
"Every little bit and every piece that can be done adds to addressing this opiate epidemic," offered advocate Merielle Paul.
If homeowners discover old pills they don't need anymore, they can drop them in one of many specially-designed containers in just about any police department.
"It's sad that we have to be in this kind of a situation, but it is what it is," Wluka said. But as the past chairman of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board and past president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, he says his colleagues are ready to be part of the solution.
