I am a lock hawk. I closely observe people in the Upper Valley to see if they lock their cars. Fear not, fellow citizens: nothing nefarious is afoot. I shan’t pinch a purse from a Prius or snatch a satchel from a Sonata. I simply like to see whether and where people lock their cars

In front of the child care center where I take my youngest son, I tease those who lock. It is hard to imagine theft in the chaotic blizzard of snow pants, lunch boxes and blankets that is pickup and drop off. And I quietly admire the folks who tell me that they never take the keys out of the ignition, no matter where they park.

At my previous residence, in a village of 250 people in Burgundy, France, I left my house and cars unlocked until my neighbor admonished me. Most crime in the area, he explained, was perpetrated by transient populations. They stole farm equipment, chainsaws and, once, the town’s garbage truck, which resulted in several weeks of uncollected refuse. If you’re stealing a garbage truck, I figured, you might like what’s in my house. So I started locking.

Back home in the Upper Valley, I have been asking some of my old schoolmates now scattered in Hanover and Massachusetts and North Carolina and California their memories of locking. No one could recall any Upper Valley house being locked when we were children.

So, I wondered, have things changed? Well, no and yes.

By and large, people here are relaxed about locking their cars, homes and belongings. At one area facility with locker rooms (because I do not wish to give an explicit roadmap of potential targets to readers with unsavory intentions, I will not name specific places or people), staff informed me that there was almost no locking in the building. Sometimes, visitors complained about the lack of locks. But, when they were shown shackles, dials and cases for sale for nearly 10 bucks, their cash proved more important than their perceived risk. The staff informed me that, generally, most of these complaints emanated from folks from New Jersey or Massachusetts.

I wondered what was happening at Dartmouth College. In an email, Associate Vice President for Communications Diana Lawrence said, “Dartmouth has not seen any increase in theft on our campus in the last few years. Students are encouraged to keep all lockable doors secured. Many of our students are from larger populated areas and are accustomed to locking the doors of their homes.” (A friend who grew up in Norwich and went to Dartmouth said, “Our dorms locked automatically, which took getting used to. But when we lived off campus, we never locked.”)

Outside of academia, there appear to be certain geographic triggers that affect behavior. Nearly everyone said that they lock in “West Leb.” One woman joked that she never locks in her Vermont town, but does in Hanover. “Rough crowd across the bridge and all.” I heard a lot of “we lock at night” and “we always lock, but leave the back door open.”

But I also heard “we never locked when I was a kid. But now…” A house I used to frequent in Etna now has an alarm system, unimaginable back in the day. “We never used to lock cars growing up, now I do,” said a woman in Norwich.

What is causing this increased caution? Two things came up repeatedly. First, the 2001 Zantop murders in Etna. A high school classmate of mine said it this way: “We didn’t lock our house until that (expletive) went down.” In the wake of such horror, it is only natural to take increased safety measures. Nevertheless — and this feels insensitive to note — a deadbolt probably would not have made any difference in that instance. The victims answered the door and let the killers in.

The second issue — and one that definitely did not exist during my childhood in the Upper Valley — was best summed up by a man in Bradford: “We live in the capital of heroin.” He has seen people shooting up in the parking lot of a local grocery store. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking people aren’t cruising around looking for easy targets,” he said. When discussing his childhood, he said, “I don’t think my house had a lock growing up.” Now, he and his family sleep with the doors firmly bolted.

I called Thetford Police Chief Michael Evans for his perspective. He was clear that opiates are at the root of many area thefts. “People are trying to fuel their drug habit. They steal your cash, even if it’s loose change. They take small electronics. They take advantage of easy opportunities. They knock, if no one is home, they try the doorknob.” He said that drug addicts will walk around parking lots trying car doors. “If you need some heroin,” he continued, “and you have zero dollars and zero cents, maybe you can get a couple bucks out of each car.” Crimes like these often pass unnoticed. Sadly, even universal locking seems unlikely to stem the tide of opiates flooding our communities.

When faced with whether or not to lock one’s house, Chief Evans, who advocates for “at least making it a little harder” for potential burglars, simply says, “Possessions are one thing; lives are another.”

Locking is an intensely personal statement. It says how we feel about our neighbors, about strangers, about risk and safety. In some way, locking is a reflection of our relationship with the Upper Valley. I understand all the common sense reasons to secure our belongings and our families. But I cannot help but wonder: If we lock our belongings and our homes up tight, is it possible that, instead of preventing crime, we are actually robbing ourselves of the faith we have in the communities where we live?

Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.