An elderly woman was arrested in Palo Alto early Sunday morning after surveillance video captured her allegedly breaking into a church.
Palo Alto police took into custody 70-year-old Ethel Jean Hays an hour after officers say she burglarized Trinity Lutheran Church on Middlefield Road, which officers later discovered Hays had broken into once before on Feb. 9. She was booked on two counts of burglary.
That's when, police say, she allegedly stole cash donated by parishioners, which was being stored in the church office.
Police found Hays walking on Lytton Avenue and saw that she matched a description of the surveillance footage in the church. They said she admitted to being inside the building. And when they searched her, police said they discovered she was carrying not only a key to the church, but several other keys to several local businesses, as well as documents from a Los Altos preschool.
It’s still unclear how Hays got her hands on of all those keys. But police are looking into whether any of the corresponding businesses were recently burglarized.
