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Carmen Peterson’s son, Ethan, is a huge fan of the Elmo Club and Mickey Mouse. Although Ethan is non-verbal, he loves to sing in his own way.
“He’s an 8-year-old who really likes to have fun. He doesn’t talk, but he gets his point across,” Peterson says.
Ethan suffers from a rare genetic disorder. Squirrel1 – which causes, among other things, a type of seizure that can send him falling to the ground without warning.
“It’s all just kind of shorts for a moment,” Peterson says. “The danger of that — and I’ve seen that — is falling on wood or concrete floors or down stairs, all of those things.”
She says he was injured and she had to take him to the emergency room.
Ethan takes a medication called Epidiolex Which prevents these seizures from occurring. But last holiday season, a thief stole it from the family’s front porch in Charlotte, North Carolina
Peterson remembers finding the empty box and then checking her Ring doorbell camera footage. “I see this man leaving… and I’m so angry,” she says.
Next, she had to figure out how to replace that medication — worth $1,800 — so her son wouldn’t miss a dose. It turned out to be a challenge.
How many packages were stolen?
December is a busy time for package deliveries and for porch pirates stealing them. Sometimes thieves get away with mail-order medications instead of getting an iPad or Labubu.
E-commerce has taken off during the pandemic, and December is still December The busiest time of the year For package delivery, according to the U.S. Postal Service.
However, it can be difficult to get the full picture when it comes to package theft.
Although it is easy to buy things online, getting them to customers is really complicated. This is because many people and businesses interact with the package before it is delivered, according to Ben Stickle, Professor of Criminal Justice Administration at the University of Middle Tennessee.
“So, it’s really difficult to know what’s going on from the point you click the button to the time it’s delivered, and put it all back together with enough detail to know when and where these thefts are occurring and then do something about it,” he says.
Stickle worked on the study With the Postal Service going live earlier this yearHe says victims of theft end up reporting it to different places that don’t share the information with each other or even necessarily record the lost package as “theft.” Sometimes victims do not report it at all.
“There are a lot of stolen packages,” he explains. According to security research company SafeWiseThat is, about 250,000 packages every day. Stickle has worked with SafeWise.
The Postal Service report estimated that at least 58 million packages would be stolen in 2024. “So what are the odds that one of these packages, without the thief’s knowledge, would contain some type of medication?” He says: No one knows for sure.
Ways to reduce the risk of theft
So what can you do? Stickle says scheduling deliveries when you’re home and having a hidden drop-off location are good ideas. Even your balcony cabinet that doesn’t lock is a good deterrent.
“If a thief can see the package, even if it’s an envelope on your porch from the road, it’s very likely it will be stolen,” he says.
According to Express Scripts and Optum Rx, two companies that offer mail-order pharmacy services, drug theft is very rare.
CVS Caremark, another company that ships prescriptions through the mail, said it offers customers package tracking to prevent theft, but did not answer NPR’s question about how common drug theft is.
Pharmacies, including Walgreens, say they provide order tracking and use discreet packaging to help prevent theft. Customers can also choose to require a signature when their medications are delivered.
Making sure patients don’t miss a dose is a top priority, says Stryker Autry, director of loss prevention and turnaround at Optum Pharmacy, part of OptumRx.
“Especially during the holiday seasons when deliveries spike, we want to make sure we’re building peace of mind for our customers,” he says. “So if a theft occurs, No. 1, call the pharmacy immediately.”
It is also recommended that you report the theft to your prescribing physician and local law enforcement authorities.
Replace a lost prescription
As for Carmen Peterson in North Carolina, when she called her insurance company’s pharmacy to replace Ethan’s medication, the answer was no. But Ethan missed a dose and had a seizure that put him in the emergency room again? Not an option for her.
“It’s like it’s one of those things where you don’t have a choice,” she says.
If she had to, she could have found the money to buy the medicine herself.
“It was unfortunate that…the company was so ready and willing to wash their hands of it because they felt like they did what they were contracted to do, which was deliver the drug.”
That company, Levinity Pharmacy, said it could not comment on the Peterson family’s experience because of patient privacy laws.
Unwilling to give up, Peterson reported the theft everywhere and made a fuss about it, including in her local area News stations. It worked. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the medication Ethan needs, saw the stories and replaced it for her within a week.
She now recommends delivering important medications to your mailbox or workplace, or just going to the pharmacy to pick them up yourself.