But Raleigh police tell me it's a cautionary tale for all of us, all over the Triangle.

The setting: Quail Hollow in what we used to call North Raleigh, now known as Midtown.

The time: A Tuesday morning in late June.

The victim: Deirdre Duffy.

It was about 11 a.m., and Duffy was upstairs, taking a quick shower after an active morning of water aerobics and a few chores.

I'd like to say that she heard something or sensed something. The scary thing is, she didn't.

She did a little bookkeeping and came downstairs shortly after noon.

That's when she noticed a carving knife on the counter.

Duffy hadn't used a carving knife that morning and hadn't left one out.

Odd, she thought.

She fixed lunch and sat down to eat. At 12:30, her husband came home from lunch.

"He was surprised to find me there," she said.

Why?

Well, her car -- a 2007 Toyota Camry with 3,100 miles on it -- was missing from the driveway.

Suddenly, the carving knife took on a more ominous meaning.

More than two weeks later, Duffy's car is still gone. It's unclear whether the thief or thieves came in through a back door left open when Duffy let out the cat -- or a screen window found loose and hanging on the garage.

Duffy is convinced she was the target of pros -- they took nothing but the keys and $15 in cash from her wallet, even though there was an iPod and a computer nearby, not to mention all of Duffy's credit cards.

Still, according to the Raleigh police, it's opportunistic crime that's on the rise in our area. That's crime fueled by the economy -- and the price of fuel.

"We've seen a big increase in just pawn activity," Detective Sgt. A.J. Wisniewski said. "We see people pawning anything from a Weed Eater to a lawn mower. It's just the simple $20 item that puts tomorrow's gas in someone's car."

To Wisniewski, it's simple math. If you're making eight bucks an hour, the rising price of gas gets painful real quick.

"Two dollars a gallon is one thing," he said. "Three dollars is another. But $4 is something altogether different."

To combat the spate, Harry Dolan, Raleigh's police chief, has told officers to get out into the neighborhoods more, to question people hanging around, to show police presence.

As for us residents, the advice is age-old.

Lock your doors, even when you're home. Be alert to strangers.

The one piece of good news, Wisniewski said, is that the increase in property crimes has not resulted in an increase in violence in Raleigh.

"These guys generally don't want a confrontation," he said. "They just want some cash."

Of course that's little comfort to Deirdre Duffy. A day after finding the carving knife on her counter, she read about how Eve Carson's killers might have entered her unlocked door.

Duffy wrote me in an e-mail message:

"Needless to say, we are installing a security system and will live like prisoners in our own home."

It's hard to imagine in a nice, unpretentious neighborhood like Quail Hollow.

But crimes of opportunity -- and opportunistic criminals -- are closer to home than you think.