[That’s supposed to replace “Monday, Monday….” in the song.]
Like I briefly mentioned before, yesterday = not the most fun day ever. Here’s how it went.
Went to church at our normal 9am meeting time. I lasted through the full block which later seemed to be an unfortunate thing but hey, we were where we were supposed to be. At the end of the meetings Devin and I head out to the car where we notice glass on the ground between our car and another truck. Then we realized that the passenger door window of that truck had been broken and we said, “oh, that stinks.” Then, I walk over to the passenger side of our car and sure enough, my window was smashed in too. We immediately started to look around at what was taken. For starters, the stereo. Oh, but not just the stereo, but the entire AC/heater control panel with it. We both started thinking out loud of what was in the car. GPS? The GPS is gone! Camera? Did we leave it in the car after our boating trip on Saturday? Not sure. What else? Crap. My purse. Yeah, that one definitely sucked. Immediately Devin called the police and I knew I needed to call our banks, especially since they could have had our stuff for nearly three hours. But, since my purse was gone, so was my cell phone.
I waved over my friend/Visiting Teacher/Visiting teachee, AnnMarie and told her what happened and asked if I could use her phone. By this point panic started to set in. She handed me her husbands iPhone to which I held as I said, “what do I do? I don’t know what to do. How do I get to the phone function?” Finally, she got a number for our bank dialed for me. Now, why don’t banks have a prompt for a lost or stolen debit card?! Stupid. I think I had to listen to my options three times before I figured out what to do. And of course, once I finally got through to someone I had a hard time focusing on all the play-by-play information they were giving me. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Now ma’am, what I’m going to do….” Freak, I don’t care what you are going to do, just do it and tell me what I need to know. Ultimately, I ended up calling back later that day to make sure they did what I wanted them to.
About 20 minutes later the cops finally show up. They were really nice and surprisingly thorough in their investigation. I’ve heard of people having break-ins before and the cops come, take down a brief report and say have a nice day. We were lucky to get a member of CSI who spent a good 30 minutes dusting for finger prints on both of the cars. By this time the owner of the truck had heard what happened and came out to join in the fun. It happened to be a counselor in the bishopric. From his car they took a fanny pack and a handheld HAM radio.
Upon further investigation of our car, we quickly began to realize that the thief had no idea or plan for what they were doing. Aside from the purse and the stereo (which cost us a whole $30), they decided to ignore the Walmart cash card, the $30 adapter for the radio, and our GPS unit. We were actually pretty sad when we realized they didn’t take the GPS because the one that we currently have, sucks but it’s still worth more than the stereo. From the other car they ignored a several hundred dollar satellite phone and a few other things of decent value. Instead, they were concerned about a fanny pack which had nothing of value in it.
It was kinda funny when the cop was asking me about the description of my purse. The purse and everything in it had actually little monetary value but I was most concerned about my ID, credit card, etc. For both my wallet and purse the cop asked what brand it was. Perhaps in California they would expect something like a $1,000 Coach bag. But my description was more like “it’s small, brown, fake leather and the brand? Uh, is Smith’s Market Place a brand?” It was pretty much the same story for my wallet too. Did I mention we are students?
Anyway, in the end they found two good prints off of the truck. We obviously have to replace our window, temperature control panel and the stereo, all of which costs less than our deductible so we are stuck with a few hundred dollars in repairs. Thankfully, no one was hurt, we can afford the repairs, and the damage done was relatively minor.
On the down side, we spent about an hour vacuuming out all the glass and we missed going to a redwoods forest with Devin’s boss and family later that day. But hey, the car is nice and clean inside and so is the new window. As for the rest of the outside….yeah, that’s another story.
That totally sucks. You guys seem to have a very good attitude. I got my car stereo stolen in 1999 and I’m still pissed about it.
But I think the real question on everyone’s mind, is was Devin able to take a picture of the damage with his unipod?
Boo! I’m always so worried that someone is going to steal my purse just because of the hassle that you have to go through with credit cards and licenses and stuff. I don’t even like getting a new library card much less everything else.