After several e-mails back and forth with Editor Jason Roop, I felt compelled to write my opinion to publicly address Style Weekly’s “humor” (“The Score,” Street Talk, Jan. 2): “Employees at Hankins and Anderson chip in to help co-worker Anne Hart replace the Christmas gifts she’d bought, the T-D reports, which burglars had stolen from under the tree in her home. Not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but maybe they should’ve bought her a burglar alarm.”

How crass for anyone to suggest that instead of providing the means to replace gifts, the purchase of a burglar alarm would be a better choice. Buying an alarm after the fact would accomplish what? What were your writers thinking?

I am appalled that you think it’s all right to make a joke about such a horrific experience. How would you feel if you saw such a comment in a newspaper after waking up to find that your home had been burglarized while you slept? I venture to say that you may not feel that it’s a joking matter either.

I take this very personally. If the intent was not personal or meant to be hurtful, why, then, was my name printed? You made it personal. Hurtful? You better believe it’s hurtful.

You did not experience what I did, I pray you never will, but to make a joke about someone else’s misfortune is unconscionable. The employees at Hankins and Anderson deserve better than to be made a mockery of. Style Weekly is another publication that will not make my reading list. You, apparently, fail to see the seriousness of this unfortunate event.

Anne Hart
Mechanicsville