Hope you had a nice weekend! — Dan

In May 2012, a 19-year-old Ohio woman named Mallory Bush woke up to find something amiss — in her words, “stuff was moved around.” Something overnight or that morning, someone had come into the house she shared with her parents and did, well, something — but it wasn’t immediately clear what. Nothing appeared to be missing, and the house was noticeably cleaner than it was when she went to bed. Before any sense of concern set in, the mystery was seemingly solved — she discovered a napkin that had a note written on it, saying that a cleaning person had come into the house to tidy up as requested. The cleaner left her name and address and a bill for $75.

But when Bush spoke to her parents, her parents didn’t tell her to pay the bill. They told her to call the police. They hadn’t hired a cleaner.

When the police arrived, they found nothing all that unusual — no sign of forced entry, nothing (other than a few dust bunnies, perhaps) seemed missing from the home, and no one was physically injured. At first, this looked like a case of mistaken identity — the woman who left the note and the bill (and apparently did a bunch of sweeping and mopping) probably just went the wrong address. But the police investigated anyway — it wasn’t hard to find the woman, given that she left her address. And they found that this was no accident.

Susan Warren was a 53-year-old local woman with a house cleaning business that, apparently, wasn’t getting a lot of customers. On that day in May, according to ABC News, she drove by the Bush’s home and “wanted something to do,” so she got to work: “ She entered the home in the early morning hours, washed coffee cups, took out the trash, vacuumed and dusted” — but without the permission or even the knowledge of the Bush family. And she claimed, this wasn’t the first time she did such a thing — presumably, it worked in the past, and some others in her area actually paid the bill for her unsolicited services.

This time, though, she ended up coming out way, way behind. She didn’t get the $75, of course, but was arrested, spent two weeks in jail, and ultimately posted bail of $5,000. She then pleaded guilty to charges of attempted burglary, agreeing to a year probation and 20 hours of community service. But even after accepting this sentence, she wasn’t quite sure what she did wrong. In June 2012, she told a local TV news channel that what she did was “very unprofessional,” in her words, but not wrong: “That’s how business works in this country. I mean, some people want a piece of paper to look at, they want an invoice, they want a bill. I couldn’t find a piece of paper and I sure as hell was not going to go through their personal things,”

It’s fair to say that Warren truly didn’t understand how her actions violated the security people have in their own homes and on their own property — and her statement above isn’t the only evidence of that. In January 2013 — while still on probation — Warren was in the news again. This time, she wasn’t breaking into homes, just trespassing on their driveways. As ABC News reported, a homeowner saw her shoveling their driveway, without prior permission, and called the police (not knowing her history). When the cops arrived, they arrested her for the probation violation — and found that she had been busy that day. She had nearly $1,000 in cash on her, presumably from clearing other people’s driveways and walkways that day.

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Today’s Bonus fact: Having a clean house falls to the wayside when other issues arise, and about 20 years ago, Debbie Sardone, then owner of a Texas-based cleaning service decided to do something positive about it. As the Today Show reported, a “potential client had called Sardone’s cleaning company seeking an estimate, which she couldn't afford because chemotherapy and radiation sessions left her unable to work.” Sardone responded by creating “Cleaning for a Reason,” a nonprofit that provides housecleaning services to cancer patients free of charge. To date, they’ve served more than 65,000 people.

From the Archives: The Best Way to Have Your House Cleaned Out By an Intruder: She didn’t take anything, but she left a rose.

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And thanks! — Dan