Two juveniles, neither one old enough to drive legally, allegedly drove around Thousand Oaks in a stolen car last month and broke into homes, cars and mailboxes. Afterward, they parked the car in an Amgen employee parking structure at 1889 Oak Terrace Lane, Newbury Park.

When the young men, both 15, tried to retrieve the car on May 8, they were turned away twice by Amgen security. When they came back a third time, security officers John Langford and Jaime Morataya became suspicious and called the police.

One of the suspects then left the parking structure site, but the other stayed and was recognized by one of the police officers who arrived at the scene to investigate. He had seen the boy in a surveillance video the day before, Detective Todd Welty said.

The video had recorded juveniles allegedly involved in mail and auto burglary outside a home. The officer said he recognized the young man and the car the suspect was allegedly trying to retrieve from the parking lot from the surveillance video, Welty said.

The suspect at the scene allegedly had a key to the reported stolen car with him and the driver's license of the car's owner in his wallet, Welty said. He was immediately arrested.

"Her purse had been in the car when it was reported stolen," Welty said.

The juvenile who had left the area was located a short time after the incident. He, too, was arrested.

Stolen items were allegedly found inside the vehicle parked at Amgen and in the young man's room inside his father's Thousand Oaks home, Welty said.

A backpack with books inside, clothing, jewelry, a GPS system, credit cards, mail, house keys and purses were among the items that were recovered.

"We've linked the items to 16 victims," Welty said.

The items were stolen from cars in parking lots at The Oaks mall and Janss Marketplace, he said. The dwellings allegedly broken into were at the Hillcrest Park Apartments.

The boys arrested admitted to burglarizing two residences and three unlocked cars and to smashing the windows to gain access to items seen inside five or six cars over the past month and a half, Welty said.

Each juvenile was charged with two counts of residential burglary, one count of vehicle theft and numerous counts of vehicle burglary and petty theft. They were cited and released to their parents and are awaiting formal charges to be filed while Ventura County Sheriff's Department detectives try to reunite about 90 recovered items with their rightful owners.

"In the last year we've arrested a couple dozen people for breaking into cars, and we've been told by the people we've arrested that they only break into cars where they can see something inside," Welty said.

He strongly suggests that people not leave valuables inside vehicles or, if they must leave something valuable, hide it.