A 54-year-old Georgia woman walked into an occupied home in Palo Alto's Professorville neighborhood on Monday, July 6, was discovered by the resident in her kitchen, then fled with about $1,000 in belongings in a backpack, according to the Palo Alto Police Department.
Police arrested Funda Yilmaz hours later after a community member spotted her trying to open locked car doors half a mile away. She was booked into Santa Clara County Main Jail on a felony charge of residential burglary.
The break-in happened around 7:40 a.m. on the 1100 block of Ramona Street, police said in a news release published Tuesday, July 7. The resident, a woman in her 50s, walked into her kitchen and found a stranger standing there. She told the intruder to leave and called 911.
Yilmaz fled with the backpack. Officers arrived within minutes and searched the area but could not find her.
That afternoon, someone called police to report a woman pulling on locked car doors on the 1800 block of Middlefield Road, near Tennyson Avenue in the Leland Manor neighborhood. Officers responded, detained Yilmaz without incident, and determined she was the same person responsible for the Ramona Street burglary.
Police recovered all of the stolen items. The investigation found Yilmaz had entered the home through an unlocked rear door. No arraignment date has been announced.
Similar unlocked-door burglary reported in March
The Ramona Street case marks at least the second time in 2026 that a burglar entered an occupied Palo Alto home through an unlocked door. On Friday, March 6, an unknown man entered a residence on the 200 block of Creekside Drive through an unlocked rear sliding glass door while an 80-year-old woman slept inside, according to a separate PAPD news release. That suspect took approximately $5,000 in purses and jewelry and has not been identified.
In both cases, the victims were women home alone when the intruder entered through a rear door that had been left unlocked.
How to report information
Anyone with information about this or other burglaries can call the Palo Alto Police Department's 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413. Anonymous tips can be sent by texting the keyword PAPD plus the tip to 847411, or through the Palo Alto PD Tips app available on the App Store and Google Play.
