I have never been much of a thief. I think I stole a pack of candy when I was twelve or thirteen. I always felt guilty about it. I also have been a relatively trusting person, I have applied myself to the theory that If I do not steal I will not be stolen from. I also trust enough to leave my car and house doors unlocked. I know that it was a relatively foolish approach. I was even more trusting at work, repeatedly leaving my key in the seat, and not locking the doors.
One of the crew is always around the truck. We are usually within one hundred feet of the truck at all times, as we were on Thursday. We have two houses we do on Riverside Drive in Atlanta. The houses are in a quiet area, not far from the interstate, but very secluded. We were all away from the truck, blowing off a yard. We had made it up to the top of the driveway, and around the house to complete the maintenance in roughly ten minutes. When we were done I proceeded to walk down the hill to the truck. The truck was gone. O.K., someone has played a joke on me, one of the other crews has moved my truck to get a laugh. We took off down the street to find the truck. It was not there.
It took about five minutes for it to sink in; the truck was stolen. It was time to call the police and the boss. I checked my pockets for my phone. It had been stolen with the truck, both of them. I knocked on the customers’ door, but no answer. I walked over to a neighbor’s house and asked to use the phone. I then called my boss to make sure it was not a big joke. It was not. I then called the police. I explained the situation, gave them the address, and they said an officer was on the way.
Twenty minutes later an officer showed up. He asked all of the basic questions, never getting out of the car, and actually leaving the car in gear, and continuously rolling while I was talking to him. He then asked for the tag number of the truck. I explained that if I did not have the tag number, He could not file a report. The officer left and I went back to the neighbors’ house to make a call for the tag number.
I called 911 again and gave them the tag number, and the dispatcher said the information would be relayed to Sandy Springs. One of the other crews showed up and we had a moment to breathe. I had nothing on me, both of my phones, my cigarettes, my keys, they were all gone. We started to discuss all that was lost with the truck. We had a trailer with two mower, two string-trimmers, an edger, pruners, and lots of other stuff. I had lost my book bag and my lunch box. In my book bag were my brand new school books, and my laptop computer (my new one). In my lunch box was my dinner, and my medicines.
I was, and still am very upset by the loss of my things, but the realization that I had lost all of the equipment was the bad part. It was a rough afternoon and the rest of the day was very subdued, as everyone was still shocked by what had happened. Friday was spent working with another crew and reassembling a truck for my route. Needless to say there was lots of tension. Finding extra things to use on the temporary truck only reminded us of what we had lost.
Saturday was spent realizing I had no phone, and no computer. My computer was used for school, for pictures, for music, and for my bill paying, and on-line purchasing. I have canceled my credit cards, and will be forced to change my e-mail address; an email that I use for school, for business, and for personal correspondences. I purchased the cheapest cell phone I could find, and it is a big step down from the Smartphone that was stolen. It is amazing how much of a part of my life my computer was. I lost two years of digital pictures; of which I had no backups. I lost my school projects, and some valuable software. My textbooks were stolen, which I just bought two weeks earlier.
I was told I might be able to claim my losses on my home insurance policy, so I called expecting a big fat "No". To my surprise, everything was covered. I was very pleased to say the least. My boss called me later in the day and told me that someone had called and asked if he knew his truck was parked at a church in Atlanta, nearby Turner field. The truck had been found. The truck was in tact (no trailer of course), and the radio had been stolen. The keys were in the ignition. My book bag, my cell phones, and my lunch box were missing.
My boss had met up with an officer at the church, and asked him if the truck could be dusted for prints. The Fulton county officer informed him that the truck had not been reported stolen. Forty-eight hours after I called 911 and reported the truck stolen, the paperwork had not been filled. My boss finally got in touch with a Sandy Springs detective, and asked him if the truck could be dusted. "I'm not coming down there" was the response he received. "And you can't bring it up here because there is no one on duty." Apparently the entire precinct is shut down for the weekend. If I were to guess, I would say Sandy Springs has a population of eighty to one hundred thousand people. So, Monday the truck will be taken to the precinct to be dusted for prints, and maybe, just maybe, we will have a police report filled for a stolen vehicle.
There are a million things I could say about the situation, but in the end it just doesn't matter. I am continually educated on the way our world is, and find out how slow, and bloated our systems are. I know that we have lost a lot as a company, and I have lost a lot of my things. In the end it is only "stuff", and I am glad that no one was hurt. I have learned yet another lesson I did not want to learn. My trust is slowly waning. I refuse to drop my school classes, but I will be playing catch-up, for the rest of the quarter.
.....I don't know why I wrote all of this, it could be the fact that I don't have any composition homework, or that I just wanted to get it off my chest. Having things stolen from me really pisses me off, and the dealing with the aftermath of having things stolen makes even more irate. I had to break into my own truck to get proof of ownership, so that I could have a new key made. I was also forced to buy a new book bag. I had a German backpack that was WWII era. I had it for over twelve years. It was made well. I broke one of the plastic brackets on my new pack the first night I had it. It's the little things that make life worth living.......
