OXNARD : Ex-Con Gives Tips on Protecting Home

Either way, it seemed that crime did pay.

First, Michael McCaffrey made a living by stealing: armed robbery, burglaries, even bank heists. A good living, too. He has claimed he made as much as $265,000 one year.

Then, the Boston native, an Irish Catholic, repented and began a new, 15-year career--earning an annual income of $250,000--telling people how to protect themselves against his ilk. American Express and Tiffany & Co. were among his clients.

Now, saying the hectic pace exacted a high toll--costing him his marriage and his home--he lives quietly as caretaker of a psychologist’s home in Altadena and tends roses.

But Tuesday night at the Oxnard Community Center, the 50-year-old McCaffrey, now semiretired, spoke of his past life of crime and offered tips on safeguarding homes against such crime. He was not paid for the speech.

“I stole from you for over 20 years,” McCaffrey told the receptive audience of 200. “It doesn’t matter where you go or where you’re at. You’ll run into people like me and you’ll get fleeced.”

Listeners seemed to like what they heard as McCaffrey wove anecdotes from his life as a professional criminal with practical advice.

“We heard some very good things tonight,” said Fritz Eschrich, an Oxnard retiree whose house was burglarized several years ago while he and his wife, Helen, were home. “Like she leaves her jewelry out,” a habit that is near the top of McCaffrey’s list of no-nos.

“But then I put them away and don’t find them anymore,” Helen Eschrich said jokingly.

McCaffrey became a criminal at 16, he said, and for 20 years lived outside the law--and sometimes inside the walls of state prison, including San Quentin and Folsom. But just before a planned bank heist in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, he had a “spiritual awakening,” he said, and has never looked back.

“Who am I really afraid of when I go into a community?” he asked. “A burglar alarm or the neighbor across the street who sees me and knows the time of day, what I was wearing and (could) pick me out of a lineup?”

That was perhaps the most important message of the evening: Get involved in Neighborhood Watch programs. Know the neighbors. Keep an eye out for each other.

McCaffrey repeatedly praised Oxnard’s Neighborhood Watch program, which he credited for a 4.5% decrease in crime in the city.

Mona Neuhaus, an Oxnard resident since 1979 who is actively involved with Neighborhood Watch, agreed.

“Tonight kind of reaffirmed all the things we’ve been learning over the past year,” she said. “It really is paying off.”