The Grinch, or some of his friends, visited Roslindale Tuesday, stealing the presents under Janira Delcompare's Christmas tree.
Gone was the new Hot Wheels set for her son and the hard-to-get
Thieves even carted off her 42-inch flat-screen television, which hung on the living room wall.
Delcompare - a 24-year-old single mother of two, ages 4 and 9 - stared last night at the linoleum floor under the tree where the presents had been.
"I'm very upset," she said. "This is the first Christmas I was able to give them a lot. It's sad that people have to do this, it really is."
Police have not found the presents, but they did make an arrest in the case yesterday afternoon.
A trail of tinsel from Delcompare's Christmas tree led them to the doorway of one of her neighbors downstairs.
Officers knocked on the door, and when a woman answered they saw two men move quickly into a bedroom. They questioned both men and arrested Fernando Mays, 20, of Dorchester, on charges of breaking and entering in daytime, in connection with the stolen gifts.
Police arrested a second man in the apartment, David Roberts, 24, also of Dorchester, on several outstanding warrants in West Roxbury District Court.
Mays was spotted by a neighbor hauling red and white gift-wrapped presents from Delcompare's apartment, a red brick complex on American Legion Highway. The neighbor told police she saw a man jiggling the handle of the door to the Delcompares' apartment sometime before 4:17 p.m., opening it, and carrying the presents away. The neighbor also told police she saw a man carrying the television.
Police said Roberts, who was not charged in the break, was spotted at the Delcompares' apartment at the time of the heist.
The witness and building manager contacted Delcompare, who works as a clerk in a Roxbury mortgage company. Police said she reported about 20 presents missing as well as the television, DVD, and other electronics. Delcompare said about $2,000 worth of gifts were missing from her seventh-floor apartment.
Delcompare said that it took police an hour to get to her apartment, giving the thieves time to hide the gifts so police wouldn't discover them.
"I still think they're somewhere in this building," she said yesterday.
Police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said she did not know the response time, but she offered sympathy to Delcompare. She said the Police Department would offer Delcompare and her children toys from their seasonal toy drives to help her out.
Delcompare, who said she had been homeless with her children for long periods until three years ago, had planned to take the wrapped gifts to her mother's house on Christmas Eve.
She said the thieves left a blender she had bought for her mother. Her children will still receive gifts from other relatives, she said.
"I'll try to get them little things," she said, adding that she will not get paid again until after Christmas. "But this is just wrong."
Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mwoolhouse@globe.com.
