Parental non-involvement - Rick & Kathy Hilton

When it happened, I couldn't believe that a low-speed chase featuring a Ford Bronco carrying a Heisman Trophy winner was "breaking news" coast-to-coast. But after living in the "30 Mile Zone," I understand that here, the staples of local news - floods, fires, car chases, and the police blotter — sometimes involve people that the rest of the country only sees in movies or on TV shows, so they get more attention.

Seeing the spectacle the national media made of Paris Hilton being taken into custody back in 2007, I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of her house being broken into the week before Christmas when a single thief made off with about $2 million in jewelry. And I’m disappointed that her parents, Rick and Kathy, didn’t do more to prevent it.

In their defense, most parents don’t know what their kids are really up to. For decades, young people have come to think of the word "party" not as a noun, but as a verb. If parents in this town knew what goes on in VIP rooms and after-parties when the clubs close, they’d chain their kids to the kitchen sink rather than allow them to go for a night out in Hollywood.

But most moms and dads want to believe their kids are angels who would never experiment with sex and drugs and alcohol, so they’re predisposed to denial. When your daughter is pursued by a pack of paparazzi and her whereabouts are widely reported on dozens of gossip websites, however, you can’t say you don’t know what she’s doing. And you certainly can’t say you thought she was spending quiet evenings at home when you can just Google her on any given morning and find out she was at Area or Bar Delux the night before.

I take no pleasure in counting the ways Paris has embarrassed herself and her family, but let’s not forget a few things.

In 2004, Paris practically invented the concept of the celebutante porn star when she agreed to perform for Rick Solomon’s camera.

Over a six-month period in 2006 and 2007, she was arrested twice and became L.A. County’s most famous inmate. Back then, I gave Rick and Kathy credit for slapping Lee Baca and Rocky Delgadillo around until the sheriff and the city attorney made Paris-friendly statements to the press. I also advised them to move her into a new home in a gated community and get her a car with blacked-out windows and a 400-pound driver/bodyguard for protection.

They got her the house, but not the car or the bodyguard, so when she’s at home, she’s protected from the paps, but not from her peeps. That only solves half the problem.

As she put it to a reporter from E!, "I think whoever did this, definitely has been [in my home] before. We have some suspects that I’m thinking of. I would tell them to please return my things, because I know that they’re probably watching...They just have to anonymously have a taxi drop it off in my front gate in a box. They won’t get in trouble, but if all this goes on for much longer, they’re going to get in more trouble."

I wouldn’t be surprised if a few nights a week didn’t find her hosting after-parties for her "friends," and that brings me back to her parents and their denial.

Every security guard at Mulholland Estates couldn’t protect Paris from her invited party guests, and one thing Rick and Kathy knew she was going to do when she converted a room in her house into a club (complete with stripper pole) was invite some guests over to party.

Also, they might as well file the insurance claim now because she has a better chance of remaining anonymous driving around in her customized Pepto-pink Bentley "New Money Mobile" than she does of having a cab drop off millions in jewels at her front gate. A friend told me it’s only worth committing a crime if you make enough money to change your life forever. I understand $2 million is a drop in the bucket to a Hilton, but Rick and Kathy need to realize that Paris kept enough jewelry in her house to change the life of anyone willing to steal it — and she didn’t even lock the door.

This is the second time she’s been victimized in this way and as the saying goes: Once is a trend, twice is a fluke, three times is a reasonable certainty. If this happens again, it’s reasonably certain it will keep happening.

Paris needs a bodyguard, not a BFF, because next time this happens she might be at home and she might get hurt. And her parents won’t be able to say they didn’t see it coming.