HOUSTON -- Harris County homeowners reported thousands of burglaries last year. Unfortunately, just a fraction of those cases were ever solved. The number of victims who got their stolen property back was even smaller.

One northwest Harris County woman has a different problem. She's asking Amy for help to get her stolen TV back, not from thieves, but from the Harris County Sheriff's Department.

KPRC Local 2 investigative reporter Amy Davis explains the property fight that continued long after the thief went to jail.

Sherry Pennington bought a brand new flat screen TV last year. She had it in her home for about a month. Harris County kept it in its evidence room for 12 months and Pennington says it might have been longer if we hadn't stepped in.

When a burglar stole Pennington's flat screen TV, he left her with only the owner's manual and remote control to her newly purchased $600 Toshiba.

"When they called and said they got it, it was like winning the lotto," Pennington told Davis, describing the call she received from deputies two months after the burglary.

Deputies told Pennington they found her TV at a pawn shop two months after it was stolen.

Since they also found the burglary suspect, they explained that her TV couldn't come home until after he went to court.

"I would keep calling to find out when the court was set up," said Pennington. Finally, eight months later, the case was closed. But when Pennington called the Harris County Evidence and Property room to claim her TV, the wheels of justice seemed to grind to a halt.

"They said to call the responding officer, Deputy Middleton," Pennington explained.

But that didn't get her very far.

"When I talked to him just before Christmas, he said he was no longer in charge of this," she said.

Pennington said the deputy gave her another contact.

"I don't know if it was an error, but the name he gave me was a detective who had retired," she said.

Another two months of runaround led Pennington called to call Davis with her plea.

"I want my TV," Pennington told Davis.

The sheriff's department said Pennington needed a piece of paper called "an order to restore."

"I had already called the DA. They told me to talk to the officers. Officers say to talk to the courts. Courts say to talk to the DA; and I'd been in this loop over and over and over," said Pennington.

Davis learned the judge who presided over the burglary case needed to sign the order.

"When you intervened, all of a sudden, they were really, really helpful," Pennington told Davis.

Pennington picked up her TV from the evidence and property room days later.

The judge who finally wrote that order for Pennington told Davis she couldn't remember the last time she had completed an "order to restore." She said that Houston police have different guidelines for re-claiming stolen property than the sheriff's department, so it is sometimes confusing.

Pennington wonders how many people never get their property back with all of the hassles she went through.

The Harris County Sheriff's Department tells Local 2 in 2009, it returned 1350 items to their rightful owners. Three-hundred seventy-one items were auctioned off when they say no one claimed them. The sheriff's department kept another 221 items for its own use.