Rebekka Baltzell had the day off from work at Maketto on Wednesday, but she decided to stop by for a couple of hours to prep some Valentine’s Day pastries for the next day. She’s been the pastry chef at the H Street NE staple for the last four years, and wanted to get things ready for a group of kids coming in to decorate heart-shaped cookies on the holiday.

She parked on a residential street near work, and nearly slung her black-and-white Jansport backpack over her shoulder on her way out of the car. “And then I was like, ‘eh, I don’t need it,'” Baltzell says. She left the bag in her backseat.

When she came back two hours later, someone had smashed her back window and stolen it. Her wallet was inside with some cash and all her cards, an extreme bummer for anyone. But the thieves also made off with something more precious to Baltzell: a stack of recipe books full of recipes from her 13-year-long career as a pastry chef, including the ones she bakes at Maketto. There were probably 1,000 recipes in the books altogether, Baltzell says.

“I actually have a good amount of my recipes somewhere, or I can contact old coworkers [to get them],” Baltzell says. “But the actual books really meant a lot to me.”

One of the books Baltzell had bound by hand with cupcake paper from her old job. One of the others was a Wonder Woman moleskin (one of her favorites). Another was a Hello Kitty book her father, since passed, had gotten her when she first started culinary school. “Every time I used it, I thought of him,” she says. All of them contained her recipes.

Baltzell says she and a friend drove around the area Wednesday afternoon trying to see whether the thieves might have taken her wallet and discarded the bag and the books somewhere nearby. They didn’t find anything. Baltzell’s friend submitted her story to Popville for any possible tips, but that hasn’t yet lead anywhere either. She’s offering a $100 reward and free pastries for a year (from her personally, not from Maketto) for her bag’s return.

What does all this mean for Baltzell’s ability to whip up delicious baked goods at Maketto? “Other than making stupid mistakes, I’m a professional, so I’ll figure it out,” Baltzell says. “It’s inconvenient … not everything might taste exactly how it did, but we’re not shutting down because of this.”

She has lots of the established recipes printed out in other places, anyway, she says. But she was doing lots of recipe testing for new desserts at Maketto, some of which she hadn’t yet had a chance to type up. She’ll have to start from scratch on those.

The only other thing Balztell wants everyone to know: “Please remind people to lock their valuables up,” she says.