When Tanya Huether lost thousands of dollars in electronics after a break-in this week, she was determined to get her valuables back.

Huether's dogged sleuthing paid off, eventually not only recovering her items, but leading police to a cache of goods from break-ins across the region and the arrests of four people.

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Huether, a Lacombe, Alta., resident, was staying with friends on Saanich Road on Monday when the home was burgled. Thieves stole Huether's iPad, MacBook Pro, $500 camera lens, a camera backpack - totalling almost $4,000 - and her friend's backpack with valuable research items.

Huether, a 33-year-old university recruiter, reported the burglary to Saanich police and cancelled her flight back to Alberta.

The thieves had disabled the Track My iPad app, but didn't know about the Track My Friends app, GPS-based software that allows friends with the same application to track each other.

They also didn't turn off the iPad, which would have made it untraceable.

"So they were smart, but not smart enough," she said.

Her tech-savvy brother, Steve Huether, traced the iPad to a Langford apartment building. Tanya Huether and Dale McCreery, the friend whose backpack was stolen, went to the building and searched dumpsters for their stuff.

They called Saanich police, who told them that without pinpointing a suite, there wasn't enough evidence for a warrant.

At 6 a.m. Tuesday, Steve Huether told his sister he had tracked the iPad to another apartment, at 611 Admirals Rd. in Esquimalt. The location was so accurate that using her iPhone, Tanya Huether could track the iPad to one of the three balconies to the right of the building's front entrance.

The bottom suite was for rent, so she knew it was either the second-or thirdstorey suite.

"At the time, I was thinking, 'I really want my iPad.

I know it's there,' " she said.

McCreery, 30, said the two felt close, but not close enough. "Without concrete proof it was in one suite or another, the signal wasn't strong enough to track it to one apartment," said the University of Victoria masters student. "We knew that unless we found something, it wouldn't be enough for a warrant."

On a hunch, Tanya Huether checked cars in the parking lot and saw her camera backpack inside a Jeep. "I said, 'We've got them,' " Huether recalled.

She called Victoria police, who linked the car's owner to tenants on the second floor. Officers arrested four prolific offenders: two men, one from Esquimalt and one with no fixed address, and two women, one from Esquimalt and one from Saanich. They are facing charges of possession of stolen property.

Police found Huether and McCreery's items among a trove of belongings from thefts across Greater Victoria: boxes filled with credit cards, large plastic tubs of laptops, guitars and three litres of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), commonly known as the date-rape drug.

Huether and McCreery talked to tenants of the building, who expressed gratitude that the suspected criminals were being hauled out.

One elderly woman watched the female resident being loaded into a police cruiser and said, "Can she see out of there? Because I'd like to give her the finger one more time," McCreery said.

Victoria police said it will take weeks to catalogue the evidence and attempt to return items to the rightful owners.

Tanya Huether is back in Lacombe, revelling in the triumphant feeling that "for once, the good guys win." kderosa@timescolonist.com

Here's a post from one of the burglary victims:

http://www.reddit.com/r/VictoriaBC/comments/yasti/be_followed_by_some_sweet_sweet_justice/

So, day before yesterday evening myself and some friends got back to where we were staying to discover that it had been burgled, and not by no cat. About six grand worth of stuff was missing, including my backpack. The crooks thought it was their lucky day, but little did they know that THE TRIUMVIRATE OF JUSTICE was about to rain on their pitiful parade. Unbeknownst to them, there was more than standard issue tracking software installed on the i-pad they had surreptitiously swiped, and though they thought their tracks were covered, they stood out loud and clear. After the constabulary had assessed the damage, two friends and myself headed out to stake out the apartment building pegged as the probably lair of these Victorian ne'er-do-wells. We checked all the dumpsters in the area, and looked in all the vehicles, but turned up nothing, and the i-pad was no longer giving us a location. Nevertheless, we resolved to return in the early morning hours, should these criminals attempt to leave the premises with our property. At five a.m. our local eye in the sky tech wizard a.k.a. Oracle, informed us of movement, so six a.m. found us at yet another location, where through some diligent police work, one friend thought she saw a familiar vehicle from the night before, and a closer observation revealed her backpack in the back seat. At that point we called in the locals to take out the trash, which they did - arresting a handful of individuals, seizing a pair of villainous vehicles (we laughed as they were towed), and gaining access to an apartment frequented by a malicious band of (reputed) meth-dealing miscreants (in Esquimalt). Sweet sweet justice. The story continues to unfold, and a lot of property has yet to be recovered, but rest assured that when trouble strikes, WE may just possibly be there. ready. waiting. All in all a better ending than we were expecting.