Asian Families Increasingly Becoming Targets of Robbers : Crime: In one incident, five relatives are held captive in home as thieves take car and $20,000 in valuables.

The strangers at the door asked for her cousin Jae by name, so Connie let them in.

Moments later, she and Jae were on the floor, duct tape over their mouths, as armed thieves rifled through the house, tearing drawers from bureaus and ripping paintings from the walls and shouting out demands, “Where’s the money?” “Where’s the jewels?”

“They thought we had money in our pillows, in our mattresses, because we are Asian,” 21-year-old Jae recalled in an interview Wednesday.

He asked that his family’s last name not be printed.

Jae said the robbers captured three other family members as they came home during the hourlong takeover Monday afternoon. They then locked the family in a bedroom closet and drove off in Jae’s black 1994 Honda Accord.

Police say home takeover crimes are becoming an increasing hazard for Asian families in the San Fernando Valley, although they are not as prevalent as in the San Gabriel Valley.

“As you get more Asians in the Valley . . . they are being targeted,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Jim Tiampo of the department’s Asian Crimes Task Force.

Police believe that the four men and one woman who robbed Jae’s home in the 15400 block of Lassen Street are Asian gang members, Tiampo said. The gangs usually rob for money, targeting Asian families who “traditionally keep cash or jewelry” at home, he added.

The thieves frequently rehearse the actual heist, Tiampo said, and occasionally date girls who live in the house to scout for valuables. When they strike, they typically hold residents at gunpoint, sometimes pistol-whipping their victims into submission.

The family robbed Monday was more fortunate than many because no one was harmed, police say. Jae and Connie were put in a closet, along with their aunt and cousin who were met at gunpoint when they came home. An uncle, in his 60s, also came home at that time. When robbers could not fit him in the closet, they bound and gagged him, then left him under a blanket.

The thieves took about $20,000 in valuables, telling the family not to call police for an hour. The family escaped by breaking down the closet door.

The bandits took Jae’s Accord, license plate 3HPR124.

Tiampo says the thieves are most likely from outside the Valley.

“These guys are predators; they will go out of town to do their crime,” he said.

Jae was still stunned at the robbery as he sat Wednesday in his living room, which overlooks busy Lassen. “It was in broad daylight,” he said.

The family had just moved to the house from Granada Hills in August.

“I would hope my parents move to a condominium or an apartment building,” Jae said. “Those seem just safer, security-wise. A home is so open.”