Thursday night after dinner, Patti Heare was parked on the couch, watching her favorite TV show before joining her husband, who was already in bed, fast asleep. "I was watching Ugly Betty and I heard the door jiggle," Heare said. "I thought it was one of my children." Instead, bold, brazen thieves were lurking outside her home. Their eyes were on the 50-inch plasma television, visible from the window. "The next thing, it just exploded," she said, describing the impact as one of the men burst in. Inside the home, muddy footprints were all over the cream carpet, showing the...