Missing socks are an annoyance, but the residents of Mirrielees have had a little more to complain about. In recent weeks, hundreds of dollars worth of clothing and lingerie have disappeared from the second floor laundry room.

Senior Catherine Fisher was the most recent victim of a string of theft that has left Mirrielees residents on alert.

“I was leaving for a debate tournament Thursday night before Thanksgiving, and I had put my clothes in the wash right before I had to leave,” Fisher said. “I moved it from the washer to the dryer at around 5:20 p.m. Five minutes after the dryer stopped, some of my clothes were stolen.”

Someone had made off with a pair of Express dress pants and two pairs of jeans, together worth about $100, she said.

Fisher emailed the dorm list, but her complaint was nothing new. The dinnertime thief, or thieves, has struck at least two other times in the same laundry room between 5 and 7 p.m., targeting Express brand clothing and other expensive apparel. In each case, the victims had not left their clothes unattended for more than 15 minutes after the dryers were scheduled to stop.

Five weeks ago, senior Jessica Flores found her Express dress shirts and dress pants missing from the dryer in the second floor laundry room. Only a few days later, her roommate, Nahid Yakuby, found her Express pants and $350 worth of Nike sportswear stolen from the wash.

“There were specific items taken from different loads,” Yakuby said. “Whoever took my clothes must have went through my loads and picked out what they wanted.”

According to Yakuby, after the first four complaints of lifted clothing, Mirrielees Resident Assistants sent out a mass email warning residents to watch their laundry closely and to keep the laundry room door shut tight.

Yakuby, however, said she had never seen the door propped open in the laundry room where all three incidents occurred. According to Flores, the only other way to enter the room is with a dorm key or through a small balcony two stories high.

“It makes us think someone in the dorm — someone with keys — is getting in there,” Flores said.

After yet another few possible incidences of theft, dorm staff told victims to consider filing a police report.

“I kind of wish I had filed a police report [at the time of the theft],” Yakuby said.

Stanford police deputy Ken Bates said only one case of laundry theft has been reported this quarter, but not from Mirrielees. In his experience at Stanford, there has never been a reported crime wave of this nature. Bates said students must file reports with specific information on the time and location of the incidences so police can determine whether or not it is a pattern.

“They need to report it so we can apprehend the criminal,” Bates said. “Maybe [the perpetrator] is someone who’s just testing the waters, thinking, ‘If I can get away with this, maybe next time I’ll try a locked door.

“If we do establish that it is a pattern,” he added, “we can get some surveillance in there and catch the person.”