KALAMAZOO, MI-- When the man came to the door of Michele Solitro's home on Duke Street Sunday morning, June 26, asking to speak to the man who mows the lawn, she told him that her husband was sleeping and that he would have to return later. Her husband was actually not at home.

A few hours later, as Solitro did the dishes, she spied the same man from her kitchen window, walking through the door of a closed courtyard between house and garage. She hollered at him to get off her property.

"The thing is, my husband talks to everybody," Solitro said Monday. She wondered if it was possible her husband had asked the man to do some yard work or odd jobs. She called him.

But as she was leaving a message on her husband's voice mail, police cars pulled up in front of a neighbor's house, she said.

It seems the neighbor had spotted the same man removing items from a garage and stacking them alongside the building.

The 39-year-old Kalamazoo man police arrested has a history of stealing from homes and garages, said Kalamazoo Public Safety Captain Victor Ledbetter.

Robert Claude Smith was arraigned Monday on two counts of home invasion and two counts of larceny from a building.

On Monday morning the man's arraignment had not yet been scheduled, according to the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor's Office.

The man is well-known to police, Ledbetter said. "He has been arrested numerous occasions. (This time) he was found to have entered a few garages and removed lawn equipment in the area."

Solitro said after her husband got home they discovered their garage was missing a back-back leaf blower and a chop saw.

"The police said they have caught him before, they said he has a partner who is driving a truck," she said. Their items have not been recovered.

"He had come to our house offering to mow the grass, and came into the garage to talk with my husband" who declined the offer, Solitro said. "I think he was casing our garage."

"Another neighbor hired him to do edging, and he said he would come back later," she said. "Our neighbor told him he would be at church."

Solitro said she believes she and her neighbors may have had a false sense of security because the street is so busy, with so many people out and about, it seemed unlikely anyone would steal things in broad daylight. "There are too many people around," she said.

Yet "he just strolled up like he owned the place."

She said her bicycle was stolen from the garage earlier this year, while they were inside the house.

"One last thing we noticed," she said. From a new 8-pack of Coca Cola on the freezer, "he took a Coke. It was like an extra little slap."

Rosemary Parker is a reporter for MLive. Contact her at rparker3@mlive.com