For those of you that are used to me doing mindless chatter that may or may not be funny, I'll do my best to insert that as much as possible. But this is probably going to be a journey of another kind - be warned. I don't like being somber or philosophical in my writing because I get nervous and I don't do it well but I think it's sort of necessary during parts so here we go. Not sad, just serious, sort of. I'm also going to try and keep it to the points that matter. The "in person" story is much more animated (as usual) so if you wanna hear it, give me a ring!
About a month and a half after Trev and I were married, we were pulled out of church by a Layton City police officer. How's that for a start to a story, eh? Yeah. . that's what my debate coach liked to call an "attention grabber". Thanks, Hop. Now this was doubly cruel not just because we were pulled out but because we were new. . . and from what I hear, the church doesn't look favorably on criminal activity which is what it looked like.
I had just seen the uniformed officer after sacrament meeting and leaned over to Trev and said "That is sad. There is only two reasons they come to church in uniform: to arrest you or tell you that someone in your family has been in an accident." No sooner had those words left my mouth (that's what I call K-A-R-M-A) than we overheard the officer asking someone if they knew where Trevor was. My heart hit my feet, literally. Thoughts rushed my mind of my parents and Trev's parents and what could have happened. I'm glad to say that I did not, for one second, assume that he was a drug dealer. See. . . we really are in love!
Trev went back and introduced himself and the officer asked Trev to step outside. Heart, in the feet. Remind you. This is where the first lesson comes in. As I stood in the foyer of our church building, by myself, new, obviously nervous, all I overheard was people talking about our family. I heard everything from "That's so embarrassing" to "Go out and try to listed to what is going on, dad" and people laughing and pointing at us. Trevor and I had done nothing wrong and yet because of how things "looked", we were completely judged. I've never looked at other people in awkward situations the same way since. . . at least OUTSIDE of Wal-Mart. . .
It's amazing how a situation like that can change your perspective. Nobody knew what was happening, not even me and yet we were immediately pegged as bad people who should be embarrassed. I started thinking about how many times I'd done similar things by making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. Bad Carlee. That instant, that moment, changed me.
Come to find out, some of our stuff was recovered outside of a home near ours and the officers were trying to find out if we knew anything about our vehicles (that's right. . . plural) that had been broken into. We identified the things that they had collected and made our way back to the house.
The police told us that in addition to our stuff, a young girl had been found on the lawn drunk as a skunk and had been taken to the hospital to be treated. Oh, and she wasn't talking about anything that had happened. The weird part is that we would have had to walk right past said girl, passed out on the lawn, on the way to church and we MISSED it!?!? How in the world did that happen? I mean, I can get caught up in my own business and get chatty but I would like to think I pay more attention than that!! Second lesson: pay attention, particularly to your feet. You'll never know when you have to step over a drunk.
So, after we talked to the police I did the only logical thing I could think of - I cried. A lot. We had a TON of stuff missing and it was a huge deal - a big Nikon camera, a laptop, a projector. Sidenote: Let me explain why our trucks sounded like a pawn shop. Trev uses a lot of electronics in his business. We had been out the night before with the equipment. We didn't generally, and never now, store our electronics outside. All it took was one night of random laziness and kablam!
We talked with the cops, tried to figure out what happened, they (unfortunately) weren't very helpful. I got frustrated, got mad, got sad, felt violated, felt nervous and then after the first ten minutes. . . seriously, it's a vicious cycle.
And that leads us into lesson number three. Don't steal things. Let me tell you what it does to the person that you steal from. Besides upsetting them beyond a point they've probably ever been and besides the fact that they worked for all of those things and you did NOT, you take every sense of security that they may have ever had about their home and their things and in 20 minutes, you wipe it out. Completely. You make them not sleep for weeks, you made them check the locks on my car. . . I mean their car four times every night and you make them get nervous enough that they sit through the most agonizing four hours of their life to get a concealed weapons permit. . .That may sound far-fetched but really, it happens. So, don't steal. OK, pumpkins?
Anyway. . . here we are months later. Since this blog is already hitting maximum word capacity and we aren't even to the good stuff yet, I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest version, ready? (If you want to skip the list, you can skip to the end for a spoiler). Here we go:
- Cops: "Can't do much."
- Carlee: Whaaaaaaaat? Crying. . .
- Waiting. Nothing.
- Fixing truck. Light bulb over my head. Inspired.
- Carlee: "We need to check KSL."
- Trevor: "Found a camera, looks like ours. Vague description. Posted same day ours was stolen. I'm calling."
- Calling. Rings. No answer. Go to bed.
- Wake up. Calling again. Rings. Kid answers. No idea about the camera. Makes me curious. I start asking who the name is on the ad. Find out it's kid's older brother. SUSPICION RISES.
- Carlee's Trusty Office Mate says "We should Google the phone number."
- Google the phone number. Apparently this kid is a long time electronics dealer on KSL.com. Weird. How many 13-year-olds have access to GPS systems, phones, cameras, computers. . . I could go on but you get my point. He also has a habit of taking down his account after each sale. Also weird.
- Feel like Angela Lansbury on a hunt.
- My buddy who works as a cop tells me that this kid has been in trouble a LOT. . . and caught attempting to break into cars before. . . oh and that he lives two blocks away. This is where the phrase "coincidence" flies out the window.
- Call police, tell them info. I'm excited. They are not. Nothing happens.
- Carlee gets stir crazy. Decides to send a letter to the Chief of Police in Layton with all of the info. . . including a disclaimer that he probably hears this from people all the time and that I'm blaming anyone YET but this looks beyond suspicious and that I pay my taxes and every other patriotic or political thing I could think of about why someone has to do something. Sidenote: Kids, don't try this maneuver at home. I was desperate and angry and frankly, guided so don't inundate the C.O.P. with a ton of emails.
- Email returned same day with an apology, an explanation of how overworked the cops are (which they wouldn't be if we all listened to rule number three. . . don't steal things) and a promise to do something and look into it.
- Carlee is sad because while the response was amazing, how often do they actually do anything??
- Trevor "Um, I just got a call from a detective and they are in this kid's room right now and they found my phone."
- Carlee: Whaaaaaaaat!?
- Police station. Nice, super hardcore detective. Explains what happened. Went to house, talked to grandpa, grandpa denied, cop said "Prove it by letting us look around", gramps said "Come on in!" I LOVE GRAMPS! Thanks for the permission.
- Cop comes in, cop finds phone, gramps goes silent. Kid is busted.
- Carlee feels like they should make a new detective show called "The Hansens" and we'll just help bust Internet crime! I watch "To Catch a Predator". We could totally hack it.
- Kid goes in to station. Has "no idea" how the phone got in his room. I used that excuse too when I had "no idea" how all the Popsicles got eaten. Cute. Boy refuses to talk. Sidenote: is it weird that you can just refuse to talk to the cops and they let you leave? That is certainly not how it works on TV and it was totally disconcerting. Next time the cops come to my house because I'm quilting too loud, I'm not even answering the door!
- Kid says the camera was his mom's and he was selling it for her. Not really possible since mom is in prison. Yes, that's what we're dealing with.
- Cop charges kid with two counts of car burglary and one count of possession of stolen property.
- Hansen's feel vindicated.
- Trevor gets notice in the mail that we need to fill out some statements for court. Hansen's do so and are so verbose that it turned out longer than this blog. They need to know how we felt, right? Gosh.
OK, there's the bulleted list of everything that happened. I know it sounds crazy and it was. The bottom line is that we found the kid who took our stuff because he was not bright (and/or 13. . . they may be interchangeable) and posted one of our things on KSL. We busted him, turned him over to the cops who busted him again and now he is in BIG trouble with the court.
No, we didn't get our stuff back. At this point, it's probably on it's way to Guam. We learned a bunch, we cried a bunch, we grew a bunch and we learned the most valuable lesson: be careful about your feelings toward others and how much you let that run your life. Hate and dis contempt and revenge WILL take over your life and drive you crazy. We realized that early on in this process and vowed to not let it get the best of us and, luckily, it didn't. As many times as I wanted to see this kid picking up trash and cleaning poo for what he did and as much as I wish we had our things back, I can't help but feel bad for him. What would life have been like for me if I didn't have anyone that cared enough to know where I was at 2:00 in the morning? How different would my life have turned out if I knew that my parents would never know that I had thousands of dollars worth of electronics in my bedroom that didn't belong to me? I'm sure things would be vastly different for me now.
I'm learning (again) to love my neighbor. . . even if my neighbor is a kid who can't keep his hands to himself.
