Jennifer Pickett had been away from her Westchester home for only about 10 minutes before she returned to retrieve a forgotten baby bottle.

With her three young children and a friend waiting in the car, Pickett opened the front door of her home at 83rd Street and Kenyon Avenue and knew immediately something was wrong.

"I came home and smelled cigarette smoke and sweat," Pickett, 34, said of the Sept. 18 incident. "It was a horrible feeling."

For Jennifer Pickett, president of the Westchester MOMS club, it was second nature to spread the word around the neighborhood using the Internet that burglars had just hit her home. (Photo: Brad Graverson / Daily Breeze)

Her pit bull mix, Abby, greeted her at the front door and was clearly agitated.

Despite a 6-foot-high fence and two dogs, burglars cut the screen on a window she accidentally left open and went in. They took small electronics and jewelry, including irreplaceable family heirlooms.

"Within those nine minutes, they devastated us," she said.

Pickett's first call was to the police. But then she called a friend from her support group for stay-at-home moms, knowing she had an iPhone and could send out an e-mail via their group's Yahoo message board.

Seconds later, more than 120 members of the Moms Offering Moms Support group in the area were told about the crime and given a description of a suspicious vehicle Pickett spotted before leaving.

That e-mail, and a longer one Pickett wrote and sent later that night, circulated to everyone in the group, and beyond - including some of the area's Neighborhood Watch groups.

She soon learned that residents on a street on the other side of Sepulveda Boulevard had seen the same car, and reported it to their Neighborhood Watch liaison, Beth Marsh.

Marsh, in turn, forwarded Pickett's e-mail to the 150 people on her Neighborhood Watch list.

"It's a great way to disseminate information to the masses," Marsh said of the use of e-mail blasts, text messages and even Twitter, Facebook and other online social networking groups to fight crime.

"It's an amazing connection that communities can have and, depending on the subject, it can go beyond the community," Marsh added.

For stay-at-home parents, people who work from home, retirees and others at home during the day, receiving these communications can make a difference in preventing crime.

Pickett, who spends hours each day nursing a 6-week-old son, said discouraging crime can be as simple as opening the curtains or going outside to pull some weeds. Such a presence could thwart a common crime in which thieves canvas an area, knock on doors looking for vacant homes, and then enter through back doors and windows left open.

Westchester has seen an increase in this type of burglary in recent months, possibly as more windows are left open in the warm summer months, said Detective Nina Serna, a burglary and property crimes investigator at the Los Angeles Police Department's Pacific Division.

Serna said police had hoped that four recent arrests of suspects in knock-knock burglaries would have put a stop to the trend. But there's more than one group of thieves operating.

She said the burglaries are generally committed by South Los Angeles gang members who target Westchester because of its quiet streets and easy access to major thoroughfares and a freeway.

The LAPD division has dedicated additional resources and new strategies to combating crooks, she said, and those measures, coupled with increased vigilance by residents, have been successful.

"The technology that the citizens are using has made a major impact in the information we're getting," Serna added.

In addition to the e-mail blasts, Neighborhood Watch members can keep in contact with the department through a Web site developed by the Community Police Advisory Board. On PacificBeat.org, residents have access to telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of their local officers, as well as crime prevention tips.

Senior Lead Officer Ruben Garcia said access to technology and the ability to reach many people at once have helped officers pass information quickly to residents.

"Before, a neighbor would get burglarized and no one would know," Garcia said. "Now, your house gets burglarized and people a mile-and-a-half away will know, compare notes and look for specific cars or people that might be suspects."

The key is for people to take it a step further by walking away from their computers or BlackBerries and getting outside, Garcia agreed.

Law enforcement, he said, generally is embracing advances in technology and taking advantage of the new tools to bolster their old police work.

"It's important to be able to put that information out, and pretty quickly," he added.

Pickett said she was pleased to see how fast and far the information she shared traveled. Some people even printed her e-mail and left it on her front porch, not knowing she was the one who wrote it.

Pickett, who is on a yearlong leave from her teaching job at Richmond Street Elementary School in El Segundo, worries that her house will become more of a target when she returns to work.

"It changes your whole sense of security, not only in your own home, but in society," she said of being a burglary victim. "I have three small children and I teach first-graders. How do I tell them the world is a good place?"

Tips to thwart thieves

• If you suspect anything suspicious, call the police first.