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In which crime does not pay
14 years ago
General
The night before last, I plugged my phone into my laptop in our computer room to charge and then went to bed.
Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I went to look for my phone, and it was gone. Not connected to the charger. I wracked my brain: did I disconnect it and move it somewhere else in the apartment? I went to me.com and used the GPS tracker there. The phone still appeared to be in the complex. The dot wasn't centered right over our building, but it was in the general area. I tried sending the phone a signal -- it's basically a shrill beep at full volume that continues for two minutes. I could hear no sound. Baffling. Perhaps the phone was buried under a pile of clothes or between sofa cushions. I checked everywhere I could think of. Still, no phone.
The only thing I could think of was that someone had entered our apartment in the night while we were sleeping and taken it. But no. The idea was inconceivable. The thief would have had to travel right past our open bedroom door, walking on noisy wood floors, and taken it from the bedroom. And why had nothing else been taken? The phone was connected to a laptop. Why not take the laptop?
Still, there were a number of odd things that came to mind. Once or twice since we moved in, I had woken, thinking I heard noises in the apartment. We were not in the habit of locking the doors when we slept, so it's possible someone could have entered. Several times we had come out of the bedroom in the middle of night or in the early morning to find that the sound for our stereo system had been turned on. We had dismissed it as stray radio signals accidentally turning on the sound -- this had happened to us in a previous place even while we were in the room. All day at work I kept checking me.com, looking for movement in the phone. It strayed around the northern area of the condo complex, not really near our building. This troubled me. Could the GPS really be off that much? I convinced myself that it must be so. I thought of new places to check when I got home.
Except when I got home, I checked the website again and found that my phone was not in the complex anymore -- it was in the parking lot of the nearby mall. I couldn't believe it. Someone had been entering our apartment while we were sleeping and taking things. And, I guess, watching tv too. Mostly, though, I was furious. Someone had come into my lair and taken one of my valuables. I grabbed my laptop, put it in the trunk of my car, and peeled out of the complex like a bat out of hell. I was practically snorting fire. I won't say that I drove recklessly to the mall, but I will say I wasn't paying a lot of attention to speed limit signs. I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I got there. The map had showed the phone in a parking lot; maybe it was just sitting in the thief's car. Maybe I could send another beep signal to it, find the car, smash its window with a tire iron, and get my phone back. Or maybe I could find the thief himself, smash HIM with a tire iron, and get my phone back. At the very least I could cave in the side of his mountain and devour his ponies.
Alas, when I got to the mall, I could find no usable wireless signal to use to send a beep to the phone. However, the mall had an Apple store just inside. Perhaps someone had found the phone and returned it there -- a relative of the thief for example. Or perhaps the thief himself had brought it to the Apple store in an attempt to unlock it. I ran into the mall and went to the Apple store. There I explained my situation, which got the local representatives rather excited. We pulled up me.com and began tracking the thief's movement throughout the mall. One of the reps used his own phone and tracked that on the site as well. Using walkie-talkies and the help of local security, they attempted to make the dot for their own phone and the dot for mine converge.
In the meantime, we sent a couple of alarms and messages to the phone telling the thief that I was tracking him with the help of Apple employees, and if he didn't turn it in, we would call the police. Minutes later, someone turned the phone in to mall security -- they had found it abandoned in a restroom. I thanked the Apple employees and mall security, and headed home to unlock my phone and call the cops (hey, he didn't turn it in!).
Using the exact timestamps of the times I had sent messages to the phone, the police were able to use security camera footage to track the movements of the person who had turned in the phone back to the restroom, and then get a photo of the suspect, who, presumably frightened by the message and the alarm, left it there. The photo is blurry, but it appears to be just some teenager. However, I know it's a kid who lives in the local complex, or nearby. And I scared him, so it's unlikely he'll try entering our apartment again (I found from our upstairs neighbors that the previous tenants had had their place entered twice while they lived there).
And against all odds, I got my phone back.
Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I went to look for my phone, and it was gone. Not connected to the charger. I wracked my brain: did I disconnect it and move it somewhere else in the apartment? I went to me.com and used the GPS tracker there. The phone still appeared to be in the complex. The dot wasn't centered right over our building, but it was in the general area. I tried sending the phone a signal -- it's basically a shrill beep at full volume that continues for two minutes. I could hear no sound. Baffling. Perhaps the phone was buried under a pile of clothes or between sofa cushions. I checked everywhere I could think of. Still, no phone.
The only thing I could think of was that someone had entered our apartment in the night while we were sleeping and taken it. But no. The idea was inconceivable. The thief would have had to travel right past our open bedroom door, walking on noisy wood floors, and taken it from the bedroom. And why had nothing else been taken? The phone was connected to a laptop. Why not take the laptop?
Still, there were a number of odd things that came to mind. Once or twice since we moved in, I had woken, thinking I heard noises in the apartment. We were not in the habit of locking the doors when we slept, so it's possible someone could have entered. Several times we had come out of the bedroom in the middle of night or in the early morning to find that the sound for our stereo system had been turned on. We had dismissed it as stray radio signals accidentally turning on the sound -- this had happened to us in a previous place even while we were in the room. All day at work I kept checking me.com, looking for movement in the phone. It strayed around the northern area of the condo complex, not really near our building. This troubled me. Could the GPS really be off that much? I convinced myself that it must be so. I thought of new places to check when I got home.
Except when I got home, I checked the website again and found that my phone was not in the complex anymore -- it was in the parking lot of the nearby mall. I couldn't believe it. Someone had been entering our apartment while we were sleeping and taking things. And, I guess, watching tv too. Mostly, though, I was furious. Someone had come into my lair and taken one of my valuables. I grabbed my laptop, put it in the trunk of my car, and peeled out of the complex like a bat out of hell. I was practically snorting fire. I won't say that I drove recklessly to the mall, but I will say I wasn't paying a lot of attention to speed limit signs. I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I got there. The map had showed the phone in a parking lot; maybe it was just sitting in the thief's car. Maybe I could send another beep signal to it, find the car, smash its window with a tire iron, and get my phone back. Or maybe I could find the thief himself, smash HIM with a tire iron, and get my phone back. At the very least I could cave in the side of his mountain and devour his ponies.
Alas, when I got to the mall, I could find no usable wireless signal to use to send a beep to the phone. However, the mall had an Apple store just inside. Perhaps someone had found the phone and returned it there -- a relative of the thief for example. Or perhaps the thief himself had brought it to the Apple store in an attempt to unlock it. I ran into the mall and went to the Apple store. There I explained my situation, which got the local representatives rather excited. We pulled up me.com and began tracking the thief's movement throughout the mall. One of the reps used his own phone and tracked that on the site as well. Using walkie-talkies and the help of local security, they attempted to make the dot for their own phone and the dot for mine converge.
In the meantime, we sent a couple of alarms and messages to the phone telling the thief that I was tracking him with the help of Apple employees, and if he didn't turn it in, we would call the police. Minutes later, someone turned the phone in to mall security -- they had found it abandoned in a restroom. I thanked the Apple employees and mall security, and headed home to unlock my phone and call the cops (hey, he didn't turn it in!).
Using the exact timestamps of the times I had sent messages to the phone, the police were able to use security camera footage to track the movements of the person who had turned in the phone back to the restroom, and then get a photo of the suspect, who, presumably frightened by the message and the alarm, left it there. The photo is blurry, but it appears to be just some teenager. However, I know it's a kid who lives in the local complex, or nearby. And I scared him, so it's unlikely he'll try entering our apartment again (I found from our upstairs neighbors that the previous tenants had had their place entered twice while they lived there).
And against all odds, I got my phone back.
I just....can't grasp that mentality. But, on the plus side, there's a strong possibility that you can tell the authorities which part of the complex to focus on if they chose to canvas.
I had my neighbor break into our house, when I was in highschool; now I lock anything that possibly can be locked, from nerves.