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Mrs. cbelt3 is experiencing an inventory shrinkage. Of her pain medication ( Vicodin). This happened once before, and we locked them up in her closet in a little lock box. We suspect it might be one of the random teenagers and young adults that visit our home. We hope it's not one of our kids, but that's always a possibility.
But the lock box is useless.. the key could not be found, and it had to be pried open. So I'm in the market for a little safe with an electronic keypad, because her arthritic hands cannot handle a classic combination lock. I purchased a 'biometric' safe from Amazon, but it was worse than useless... the keypad was limited to four numbers, the fingerprint scanner would only read your fingerprint succesfully once in 10 tries, and the battery back would come apart if you slammed the door, disabling the lock. It's going back tonight.
Does anyone here have a little safe (breadbox sized) with a keypad that works for them ?
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I'd be curious, too. We also bought an Amazon biometric unit, that is pretty well made, no keypad, just fingerprint only, and special emergency key, but it's got the 1 in 10 tries thing going on, too. OTOH, it does say it works best w/ younger fingers, specifically disavowing quality use by old farts, but you gotta buy the safe, take it out of the packing box, open then door to get to paperwork to find that out as part of the set up instructions. I'm thinking something w/ a 10 number keypad that allows for long combination codes, as I don't think Baby Buzz wants to donate one of his younger fingers to the cause.
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Check for ones intended for Firearms use. They are a bit more expensive, but they are usually much heavier duty.
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Too bad you are having to deal with this. In my experience, the theft of medications is usually part of an overall pattern. So someone is coming in your home and stealing things who has a drug habit. Locking the meds is a good idea. Ideally a safe that recorded the date and time of failed attempts would be nice. Also the conservative approach is to run a free credit check for recent inquiries, since anyone in your home also has access to identifying info (and/or could be stealing mail related to credit inquiries).
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Getting a time stamp on failed attempts on the safe may not be possible, but in the cases I have seen, setting up a motion activitated camera or video camera is what law enforcement would do here. You may not want to see those results though (but you really should).
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I understand that people buy and sell vicodin for recreation but for the life of me I cannot understand why. Four years of taking vicodin, with ever increasing dosages, has convinced me it is the devil. If I could perform an exorcism I would.
I don't know anything about biometric safe's but I can add something useful. My grandparents had a fairly large, and heavy safe, that was stolen from their house. Be sure that you secure whatever safe you purchase to wall studs or the floor in a fashion making it difficult to remove.
