Three twenties disappeared from your wallet last week. You figured you must have spent them and forgotten. Then your wife mentioned her gold bracelet was missing from the jewelry box. Now you’re standing in the wine cellar realizing two bottles of the expensive Bordeaux aren’t where they should be. Your stomach drops because you know exactly what you’re thinking, and you hate yourself for thinking it. But someone is taking things from your house, and your housekeeper is the only person besides family who has access to these spaces.
This is one of the most gut-wrenching situations in household employment. At Seaside Staffing Company, families call us about suspected theft more than anyone wants to admit, and the conversation always starts the same way – they feel terrible for suspecting someone, but things keep disappearing and they can’t ignore the pattern anymore. You’ve let this person into your home, trusted them with your belongings and your private life, and now you’re wondering if they’ve been stealing from you the whole time. The betrayal feels personal even before you know for sure what’s happening. Here’s how to handle it without false accusations, without paranoia spiraling out of control, and without destroying a relationship if you turn out to be wrong.
That Sick Feeling When You First Suspect Something
The moment you start suspecting household staff of stealing is genuinely awful. There’s the violation of realizing someone you trusted might be taking your things. There’s the self-doubt – did you misplace it? Did you actually spend that cash? Are you going crazy? There’s the guilt about suspecting someone who might be completely innocent. And there’s the anger if you’re right, because this person has been in your home, around your family, and betraying your trust for who knows how long.
At Seaside Staffing Company, we hear from families who’ve been watching their staff differently for weeks, counting things after the housekeeper leaves, checking their wallets obsessively. The suspicion eats at you even before you have proof. A family in Los Angeles’s Brentwood started noticing small amounts of cash missing – never huge sums, just $20 here, $40 there from the husband’s wallet. Then prescription medications started disappearing from the bathroom. They didn’t want to believe their housekeeper of two years was taking things, but she was the only person in the house when they weren’t home. For three weeks they second-guessed themselves, checked and rechecked, felt terrible for even thinking it. Finally they couldn’t ignore it anymore and had to address it.
Start by Ruling Out Everything Else
Before you accuse anyone of anything, you need to make absolutely sure theft is actually happening. Start keeping track of what’s missing and when you noticed it. Write it down with dates and be specific – “$60 missing from wallet, Tuesday morning” or “Gold bracelet missing from jewelry box, noticed Friday evening.” Note who had access to your home when things disappeared. Was your housekeeper working that day? Were other staff there? Did you have contractors in the house? Were your kids’ friends over? Look at the pattern honestly.
Then check for non-theft explanations before your brain goes further down this road. Did you actually spend that cash and forget? Check your receipts. Did your spouse borrow that jewelry or move it somewhere? Ask directly. Could your kids have taken something? Teenagers especially will sometimes “borrow” cash from parents. Did you maybe misplace it and it’ll turn up? Be honest with yourself about your own memory and habits before you start thinking the worst about someone else.
A family in Beverly Hills was absolutely convinced their housekeeper was stealing cash from a desk drawer. They were prepared to fire her and were calling us for a replacement. We suggested they check one more time with everyone in the family first. Turns out their teenage son had been taking cash from that drawer for months to spend with friends. The housekeeper was completely innocent, and they would have destroyed that relationship and falsely accused someone based on an assumption. Rule out every other possibility before you decide it’s theft.
The Camera Question
Some families want to install hidden cameras to catch staff stealing. This creates a whole set of legal and ethical problems that need to be thought through. You can legally put cameras in most areas of your own home, but there are serious privacy concerns and trust implications that don’t go away even if the law allows it. If you install cameras without telling household staff, you’re secretly surveilling them while they work. Even if it’s technically legal in California, it permanently damages trust whether you catch theft or not. They’ll find out eventually – they see the cameras, or you have to show them footage, or they hear about it some other way – and then they know you were watching them in secret. That relationship is basically done at that point.
If you tell staff about the cameras up front, you might not catch theft because they’ll just avoid those areas or stop stealing while being recorded. And cameras in bathrooms or other private spaces where staff might change clothes or take breaks are inappropriate and potentially illegal depending on your state. California has particularly strict privacy laws about recording people, so if you’re going down this road you need to check what’s actually allowed.
At Seaside Staffing Company, our honest view is that if you’ve reached the point where you want to install hidden cameras to catch staff stealing, the trust is already destroyed. You probably need new staff regardless of what you find, because the working relationship can’t come back from that level of suspicion. A family in Los Angeles installed hidden cameras throughout their house without telling anyone, caught their housekeeper on video taking jewelry from the bedroom, but then discovered they couldn’t use the footage legally because California requires disclosure of recording in certain situations. They fired her anyway but had no evidence they could use if she’d tried to fight it or if they’d wanted to prosecute.
Having the Confrontation
If you’re confident theft is happening, you have to address it directly. Don’t send a text, don’t drop hints, don’t let it fester. Sit down with the person in private and have an actual conversation. Start with facts, not accusations. “Some items have been missing from the house over the last few weeks. Cash from my wallet, jewelry from the bedroom, bottles from the wine cellar. This has happened multiple times when you’ve been here alone. I need to understand what’s going on.” Give them a chance to explain or confess without immediately coming at them with “I know you’ve been stealing.” Watch their reaction closely – genuine confusion or surprise looks different from defensive guilt, and you can usually tell the difference if you’re paying attention. Be prepared for complete denial. Most people won’t confess even if they’re caught, they’ll just deny everything and act offended that you’d suggest it.
Don’t expect stolen items to be returned. Don’t expect an admission of guilt. Don’t expect anything except probably anger and denial, whether they did it or not. At Seaside Staffing Company, we’ve heard these confrontations go every possible direction. Sometimes staff confess immediately and apologize. Sometimes they deny it convincingly enough that families are never quite sure. Sometimes they quit on the spot because they’re insulted by the accusation. Sometimes they threaten legal action for defamation. A family in West Hollywood confronted their housekeeper about missing cash and wine bottles. She denied it completely, got very upset, said she was hurt and offended that they’d think that of her after three years of loyal service. She quit the next day. They never found out for sure if she was actually taking things or if they’d wrongly accused someone innocent. That uncertainty haunted them.
When It’s Your Kids or Your Spouse
This is why you absolutely must rule out family first before you blow up someone’s employment over suspicions. Your teenagers might be taking money from your wallet and you don’t real
ize it. Your kids might be “borrowing” things. Your spouse might have moved jewelry to a different spot and not mentioned it. You might have spent that cash yourself and genuinely not remember doing it. People’s memories are not as reliable as they think, especially about small things like whether you broke a $20 or where you set down your watch last Tuesday.
Before you confront household staff, have direct conversations with everyone in your household. Don’t hint around, ask explicitly. “Did anyone take money from my wallet this week?” “Has anyone seen my watch?” “Did someone move the silver candlesticks?” Check your own spending records and be really honest with yourself about what you might have done and forgotten. Look in weird places where items might have ended up by accident. A family in Malibu fired their housekeeper for stealing expensive earrings. Six months later the wife found the earrings in a coat pocket – she’d put them there at a charity event and completely forgotten. They’d wrongly fired someone and couldn’t undo it. That family called Seaside Staffing Company afterward to tell us the story because they felt so awful about it.
If You’re Going to Prosecute
Catching staff stealing gives you options, none of them particularly good. You can fire them and end it there, which is cleanest but means they might steal from their next employer. You can file a police report, which creates a record but often doesn’t result in charges unless the theft amount is significant or you have ironclad proof. You can try to prosecute criminally, which requires evidence, time, dealing with police and possibly courts, and most household theft cases don’t actually get prosecuted because proving it beyond reasonable doubt is harder than people think. Or you can sue civilly to try to recover the value of stolen items, which requires even more time and money and often isn’t worth it for amounts under several thousand dollars.
Most families just fire the person and move on. They’re angry, they feel violated, but prosecution seems like more trouble than it’s worth. At Seaside Staffing Company, we’ve seen very few families actually take theft cases all the way through the legal system. It’s emotionally draining, time-consuming, and often feels like you’re extending the violation by staying involved with it. A family in Los Angeles had their housekeeper arrested for stealing jewelry worth over $50,000. They had video evidence, she was charged and eventually convicted, but it took nearly two years of court dates and legal proceedings. The family told us afterward that getting the conviction was satisfying in principle, but the process was exhausting and they wished they’d just fired her and moved on. Most families don’t have the stomach for that fight over smaller theft amounts.
Getting Your Stuff Back
If items were stolen, you should assume they’re gone permanently. Stolen cash is spent. Stolen jewelry gets pawned or given to family members. Stolen wine is drunk. Stolen household items are sold or thrown away. You can ask for things back during the confrontation – “If you return what was taken, we won’t involve police” – but this rarely works and can create legal problems of its own if it comes across as extortion. Demanding return of property as a condition of not calling police is legally dicey depending on how it’s phrased and what state you’re in.
The reality is that recovering stolen items from household staff almost never happens. They’ve already disposed of whatever they took, and even if they haven’t, they’re not going to admit to it and give it back. Focus on preventing future theft with new staff or new systems rather than trying to recover what’s already gone. At Seaside Staffing Company, we tell families to write off stolen items as a loss and move forward, because spending energy trying to recover them usually goes nowhere.
What to Tell the Next Family
When you fire someone for theft and then their next potential employer calls you for a reference, what do you actually say? Legally you can be honest about why you terminated them if it’s true and you have evidence to back it up, but this opens you to potential defamation lawsuits if you can’t prove what you’re saying. Many families play it safer by confirming dates of employment and refusing to provide additional details. “I can confirm she worked here from January to July. I’m not able to discuss the circumstances of her departure.” This signals a problem without explicitly accusing anyone of anything.
Some families are more direct: “She was terminated for cause and I wouldn’t hire her again.” This tells the next employer there was a serious issue without saying the word “theft.” Some families do explicitly say “we believe she stole from us,” but this is legally risky unless you have proof you could defend in court if she sued you for defamation. At Seaside Staffing Company, we generally recommend giving neutral factual references after theft terminations unless you have truly ironclad evidence and are willing to defend a lawsuit. A family in Santa Monica told every reference caller explicitly that their former housekeeper had stolen from them. The housekeeper sued for defamation. The family had to prove in legal proceedings that theft actually occurred, which turned out to be harder than they expected because their evidence was circumstantial. They ended up settling the lawsuit and regretting that they hadn’t just given a neutral reference.
Preventing Theft Without Creating a Prison
How do you prevent theft with future staff without making your home feel like you don’t trust anyone? Some basic precautions are just smart regardless of staff trustworthiness. Don’t leave cash lying around in easily accessible places. Keep valuables like jewelry in a safe or locked drawer. Secure medications in a bathroom medicine cabinet with a count if you’re concerned. Track your valuables well enough that you’d notice quickly if something went missing. These are reasonable security measures that don’t signal “I think you’re going to steal from me,” they signal “we secure valuable items in our home.”
A family in Pacific Palisades keeps all jewelry in a bedroom safe, all medications locked in a cabinet only they have the key to, and never leaves more than $20 cash anywhere in the house. Not because they distrust their current housekeeper specifically, but because those are valuable items worth protecting and it’s just good practice. Their housekeeper doesn’t take it personally because it’s clearly about smart security habits, not about suspecting her individually. At Seaside Staffing Company, we tell families that basic security measures are appropriate with any staff, and good staff understand that without feeling insulted.
The Betrayal Hurts More Than the Loss
Here’s what families tell us at Seaside Staffing Company about household staff theft – the emotional impact usually lasts longer than the financial one. You let someone into your home and your life. You trusted them with your children, your belongings, your daily routine. They violated that trust for a relatively small amount of money or a piece of jewelry. The betrayal feels deeply personal even though it’s probably just opportunistic theft with no personal malice behind it. You question your own judgment – how did I not see this? Why did I trust them? What else did they do that I don’t know about? That violation of trust stays with you longer than the missing cash does. A family in Los Angeles had their housekeeper steal maybe $800 total over several months. The money wasn’t the issue – they had money. What devastated them was that they’d trusted this woman in their home for two years, around their kids, and she’d been stealing from them the whole time. They felt stupid and violated and it changed how they approached household staff going forward.
Suspecting household staff of stealing is genuinely one of the worst situations in household employment. You need them gone if they’re actually stealing, but you can’t destroy someone’s livelihood over false accusations if you’re wrong. Investigate carefully. Rule out every other explanation first. Look for clear patterns rather than reacting to one missing item. If you’re confident it’s theft, address it directly but be prepared for denial and for never getting full answers. Consider whether prosecution is worth the time and energy it’ll require. Implement reasonable security going forward without turning your home into Fort Knox. And if it turns out you were wrong, be prepared to make amends for the accusation. Not all staff who work in homes are honest, but most are. Handle suspicions carefully because the stakes are high for everyone involved.
