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I sat in the Bernalillo County sheriff's substation knowing how futile my mission was.

'Tis the season for holiday home break-ins, I knew, and the chances of recovering the stolen items, including my children's "big gift," were just about zero.

But what else do you do, what else can you do, when the Grinch steals Christmas?

Filing a police report was at least something. And, besides, I had promised my two teenage sons I would.

They had guessed what the big gift was and were bursting with anticipation, as I knew they would be. Now they stood to have almost no presents beyond the requisite sweaters and pajamas to unwrap come Christmas.

My sons also believed, somewhat naively, that deputies could magically become Santas and restore the stolen goods.

I wanted to believe that, too.

The gift had been an Xbox 360, one of those infernal - and at $399.99, expensive - video game consoles that for years I had vowed would never darken my doorstep, much to the angst of my children who thought surely I was the only mom in the world not hip to the absolute necessity of getting in the game.

But I had softened. I had come to think that an Xbox 360 could be used for good and not evil, that it could be a bargaining tool, as in "If you do your homework, get good grades and not make my life a living nightmare every morning, you can play on the weekends."

Whether I liked it or not, video games had become the thing that brought adolescent boys together. So why not bring them together where I could see them?

I figured that if my boys agreed to play in moderation, avoid those gory bloodbath games and play happily at home, an Xbox 360 might not be such a bad thing.

This thing was hard-won, too, victoriously purchased after standing for an hour in the early cold pre-dawn and fighting the manic crowds of Black Friday.

And now it was gone, taken from its hiding spot locked away in a shed, which now had one of its metal and wood walls peeled back like a cheap sardine can.

The thief had also apparently rooted around the other bags, located the games and left the other toys and trinkets behind.

I was immediately suspicious of a neighbor boy whom I had fingered weeks before in the theft of my daughter's cell phone.

He denied any thievery, of course, when I confronted him in a phone call.

Later that morning, his stepfather called to say he hadn't found the Xbox but had discovered my brand new digital camera in his son's bedroom - an item I had not yet even known was missing - the kid needed it to snap photos for his MySpace page, he explained.

But the universe has a crazy way of teaching lessons, and though I doubt that my children appreciate that, I am beginning to.

As I sat there in the substation, a man dropped off a plastic container and a poster about Bernalillo County's annual blanket drive.

OK, I got it. People were out there freezing with not so much as a blanket and here I was whining about an Xbox - my kids' Xbox, but a luxury item nevertheless that they didn't need to get through a cold winter's night.

No, we were warm. We had blankets and down comforters and a roof over our heads. We had a home with plenty of food and things to do even without the magic of technology.

A few minutes later, Rita and Jim McGrane walked through the substation door. Their son, Deputy James McGrane Jr., had worked here, and now a granite memorial bearing his likeness stands just outside. A few miles west of the substation on a drizzly cold March 22, 2006, night, he had been shot in the face and left to die on a dark mountain road.

The McGranes told me how sorry they were to hear about my break-in. Rita McGrane, ever gracious even in the face of her tragedy, gave me one of her warm hugs.

So, OK, I got that one, too.

This Christmas would be the McGranes' second one without their son, and she was hugging me because I had lost a lousy toy.

I still had all six of my kids. We'd still have Christmas, just a few presents short. And whatever thug had benefited from our loss, well, maybe he'd get a different lesson from the universe someday, too.