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 IPod Devotees Rocked by Thefts
 
 By Del Quentin Wilber
 
  The burglar visited every room of Sara Scalenghe's Northwest Washington apartment, stealing an expensive digital camera and a gold necklace passed down from her grandmother. But Scalenghe did not begin seething until she confirmed her biggest fear: Her new iPod had been swiped, too.
 
 The digital music player held 50 favorite songs, ranging from Mozart to Italian rap. The device also contained thoughts on a looming dissertation and recorded conversations with friends. For Scalenghe, her privacy, as well as her home, was invaded.
 
 "I know it sounds silly, but it changed everything. I was really upset," said the 34-year-old graduate student. "I can't explain it. But it hurt."
 
 Across the Washington area, thefts of digital music players are rising, police say, putting Scalenghe and others through the emotional trauma of losing something that has become an increasingly important and personal part of their lives. Victims said they felt the thieves got an illicit glimpse at their musical tastes and even their "souls."
 
 Introduced just a few years ago, the portable music players have exploded in popularity and are changing the way people enjoy and purchase music. Roughly the size of a cell phone, iPods and other MP3 players allow users to create unique playlists of thousands of songs that can be taken anywhere. The devices typically sell for $100 and up; the songs are an additional expense.
 
 Some thieves also have taken the home computers or laptops on which the music was stored. In some cases, massive music libraries  --  built by painstakingly converting compact disc collections into digital format  --  have vanished.
 
 In the first three months of the year, D.C. and Fairfax County police each reported about 50 thefts of the portable music players in burglaries, thefts from cars and robberies  --  an increase, both departments said. Other area communities have reported scattered thefts and robberies. The latest episode unfolded early yesterday, when a man was critically wounded when he was stabbed and robbed of his digital music player as he walked near the National Zoo.
 
 Detective David Swinson of the D.C. police, who has investigated a half-dozen recent burglaries in which iPods were taken, said the thefts remind him of how criminals began targeting laptops several years ago. At first, thieves hesitated to steal the computers because they did not have a ready market on which to unload them. As they became commonplace, however, thieves could not resist, Swinson said.
 
 "IPods and MP3 players are becoming a more desirable item, unfortunately," Swinson said. "Burglars are taking things they can carry with them, and iPods fall into that category. They are not going to take something they don't have a market for or they don't think they have a market for. They know they can sell iPods and MP3 players."
 
 Swinson said informants have told him that "fences," who traffic in stolen property, are putting out the word that they are in the market for the players.
 
 Swinson, a former punk rock promoter who owns an iPod, said he has come to empathize with the victims. Of his own device, he said, "I don't know how I survived without one. I would be destroyed if someone took it."
 
 Swinson helped Scalenghe get back her player, which was stolen in mid-January from her Adams Morgan apartment. A few weeks later, he was reviewing receipts of items sold to a pawnshop when he came across it, court records show.
 
 The detective, who declined to comment on the case, called Scalenghe and asked her to name the songs she had on her player, she said. 
 
 The songs and a serial number matched the device in the pawnshop. Within a few days, Scalenghe said, she got her $300 device back.
 
 "When I got that phone call, I said, 'No way,' " said Scalenghe, who even stopped going to the gym because she could not bear to exercise without her favorite tunes.
 
 "I was so ecstatic," she said. "It was such a special thing to me. It was a jewel."
 
 Police arrested a 43-year-old Northeast Washington man in the break-in, court records show.
 
 Other victims also spoke of their digital music players as though they were as precious as jewelry. Sean Bennett, 34, a University of Colorado medical student, lost his device when a thief ransacked his car in January while it was parked in downtown Washington.
 
 Touring several East Coast hospitals a few months ago, Bennett had packed his Nissan Pathfinder with clothes, a guitar, a few CDs and his new iPod, which contained several thousand songs. It had been given to him by his girlfriend and inscribed: "Sean Rocks! XOXO."
 
 While his vehicle was parked on New York Avenue NW and he grabbed lunch nearby, someone smashed the Nissan's rear window and grabbed his guitar, a leather jacket and his engraved player. Bennett spent the next 10 days continuing his drive across the country but without the music he cherished.
 
 Emily Carone, 20, said she, too, felt devastated when she returned to her dorm room at American University on April 4 and realized that her laptop and iPod had been stolen.
 
 Carone had 3,000 songs stored on the player and laptop. Most had been laboriously "ripped" from her CD collection and from other albums borrowed from friends. She had purchased about 50 other songs from Apple's iTunes Web site for 99 cents each, she said.
 
 Carone had plans to fill her iPod's memory capacity  --  about 10,000 songs.
 
 "I wasn't even halfway done," said Carone, a journalism student who also lost some interviews that she had recorded on the player.
 
 A thief struck John Hoctor's Capitol Hill rowhouse March 14, stealing a digital camera, a laptop and an iPod that contained more than 2,000 songs.
 
 Hoctor, 36, recalled how he had spent weeks huddled over the laptop, transferring his CD collection to his computer's hard drive. His collection of music is gone, and it feels  as if he lost a friend.
 
 "This relationship with my iPod was built on downloading all the music," he said. "The time and effort of developing a library, it makes you very connected with the library. It took the better part of two months. Now I have to start all over again."
 
 Experts said they are not surprised that victims are reacting so strongly, because people often form special bonds with music.
 
  "Everybody has a lot of memories they associate with music, and musical taste is usually very important to people," said Anita Boss, a forensic psychologist in Alexandria who has counseled crime victims. "You actually have a piece of identity theft here."
 
 She added: "Anytime something is stolen that is so personal, victims are going to have a reaction like that. It's not the same as stealing a coat."
 
   

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