Brenda F. Peters was certain that she owned every bit of the property on which the brick bungalow she bought 10 years ago stands in Eastern Henrico County.

That’s why the 72-year-old retired nurse was shocked to see a crew of men in her backyard in the 3300 block of Gaulding Lane engaged in some activity she had not authorized.

Ms. Peters immediately called the police June 3 to report the trespassers, but the officers who came left without doing anything.

It turns out that Ms. Peters and her neighbors do not com- pletely own their properties, just as most homeowners do not.

In the case of the homes on Gaulding Lane, their deeds include a reference to an eight-foot utility easement, according to the Henrico Department of Public Works.

Utility crews or contactors can come on their property to install new lines or replace old ones without permission, the department noted.

The crew that came on Ms. Peters’ property was from a North Carolina firm. Lamberts Cable Splicing LLC, which had a contract from Verizon to lay new Fios lines in this area as Verizon continues to expand that service to areas previously unserved.

Verizon later confirmed that Lamberts had been hired to do this work.

“They could have given us some kind of notice,” Ms. Peters said frostily, saying she wouldn’t have been so upset if the information had been shared. While Verizon claimed the company put information about the work on front door- knobs, Ms. Peters said that never happened.

She also is frustrated that workers from the company failed to have other underground utility lines marked before beginning work. As a result, she said that on June 16 they broke the buried Dominion Energy transformer that serves her property and cut off the power to her home.

“They never said anything, never apologized and never notified Dominion,” Ms. Peters said. “They just left. I got my power back on after Dominion responded hours later and found out what had happened.”

She also remains unimpressed that it took the company until Tuesday to finally finish laying the wiring through her backyard. “They left their tubing and other items in my backyard for weeks. It has been a mess,” she said. “And there was nothing that could be done about it.”

Ms. Peters is not alone in feeling invaded when Lamberts conducts work. Though the company is not affiliated, the Better Business Bureau website features complaints seven homeowners have filed against Lamberts since 2019 on previous wire-laying projects for Verizon and Frontier.

That’s relatively few, but the complaints are heart-felt. One cited Lamberts as “highly unprofessional and disrespectful of homeowners rights.”

Another cited Lamberts’ failure to provide notice to hom- eowners of the impending work, while others cited the damage that Lamberts workers caused.

In one case, a homeowner said workers broke an irrigation valve while trenching and left without reporting or correct- ing the problem, leaving the homeowner to cope with the sudden flood of water.