Los Gatans recently have been amazed to see so much big crime-related news of their fair town hit the web. Usually the Los Gatos events of the unsavory variety consists of things like drunk in public, things stolen out of unlocked cars, or personal fights gone physical.

But not so long ago, Los Gatos had a murder - the first in 5 years in this "low crime town".

Then, Lunardi's Market, a favorite grocery store here in town, had thefts from their debit machines in the checkout stands that totalled hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And in the last week or two, there were two bank robberies.

Those are just the major items. Since when did Los Gatos get so much crime?

On the plus side, of course, is that suspects have been apprehended in all but one of the bank robberies - so far. Many thanks to the Los Gatos - Monte Sereno Police for that.

The poor economy is hard on most everyone, so perhaps that explains some of the uptick in Los Gatos crime.

Yesterday's San Jose Mercury (and the Los Gatos Weekly-Times), though, ran a piece about why our fair town continues to attract businesses. The article is "'Quality of life' attracts businesses to Los Gatos".  

It is good to be reminded about what's right in town and too easy to dwell on what's wrong. Recently my husband and I spent a Sunday afternoon strolling downtown Los Altos - a lovely town where we'd once considered living. We were amazed that two-thirds of the shops were closed on a perfect summer day. A few interesting places were open, but more often we found that shops that appealled to us were not open. It was a reminder of how vibrant our downtown is. That's just one aspect of the "quality of life" in Los Gatos that can't be beat. Add to that our summer music, Shakespeare, movie nights and so much more, and you have a community that's highly desireable even when things are seeming bleak in many areas of the economy or valley life generally.