Do you want to hear a story? A good story involving a stolen bike trailer, a suspicious craigslist posting, doctors posing as thugs, and a sting operation overseen by the Spokane Police Department?
I thought so. Here it is.
Last week I forgot to put our stroller/bike trailer in our garage after I used it. I left it by our back door and totally forgot it was there. When I went out the next morning, it was gone.
I freaked out. It feels so awful to have something stolen from you! Especially if that something was your Christmas gift and you've used it a lot and loved it a lot, and it was taken with your daughters blanket and a couple toys inside. I felt sick.
Then, I got on Craigslist, you know just to see if maybe someone was trying to make a buck off our misfortune. There, in a listing posted that very morning, was a trailer just like ours. The pictures were grainy but I was pretty sure it was ours. I have never seen another trailer like ours, ever. But there one was - same colors, same model, everything added up. Besides, ours had a little identification sticker (with our names and phone number) on the front bumper and I thought I could see it in the picture. Not clearly, but it looked like something was there.
I emailed the listing. Our trailer was stolen in stroller form (without the bike trailer attachment which was sitting in our garage) so I asked the craigslist people if the bike trailer attachment was included. They emailed back (very quickly) and said they did not have the attachment but were "in the process of ordering a new part from the maker".
Since I own that trailer, I know that the company that makes it went out of business a few years ago. I called the company using the only number I could find online to check about ordering a bike trailer part. It was disconnected.
Hmmm, suspicious. Very suspicious. Why would they try to sell a bike trailer/stroller without the bike trailer part? And why would they lie about ordering a new part? I was convinced it was ours.
I called the police. The secretary that answered took a description of the stroller and my information. Then she told me that since it was Friday morning, no one would look at our case until maybe sometime next week. I told her about the craigslist ad, how I suspected it was ours and why. She told me she couldn't help me or give me any advice. "But what if it's gone by the time you get back to me?" I asked. She said again that they couldn't help me.
I was pretty upset. Isn't it the police's job to help victims of a crime? I hung up the phone and cried.
When Brad came home we decided to get a group of friends together and confront the craigslist people. We didn't want to go alone for obvious reasons: they might have stolen it and they were selling it for $100 and expecting us to show up with cash. We didn't want to risk anything.
So I set up a time and place to meet them.
Brad recruited a couple of his resident friends to follow us to the meeting place and sit in their car, ready to jump out if anything went down. Then, an hour before our meeting, we decided to call the police and tell them what we were doing. The police said they would send a car to the store and watch for us.
Feeling better about things, Brad and I set out for the meeting.
On our way the police called and said they had one team in the store watching the security cameras for us and another team in the parking lot. They told us where to park so they had a good view.
"Wow," we said, realizing that we were part of real life sting operation. "They're really going to help us!"
Once we were in position, the police called again and said we needed to get the people to pull the stroller out of the car onto the sidewalk. "Once it's out of the car we can swoop in," the officer said.
Brad and I looked at each other nervously... "swoop in?"
Soon a car pulled in next to ours and a lady got out. We introduced ourselves as the craigslist people. She opened her trunk and pulled out the stroller. Before we knew it two cop cars had screeched to a stop behind us and officers were getting out.
"Um, what's going on?" the lady said.
"I'm going to be straight with you," I said, "Our stroller, one just like this, was stolen last week. We're going to look at this and see if it's ours."
"Oh," she said, and the police took her aside to question her.
Brad pulled out some pictures we had of our trailer and started comparing them to the stroller while I examined it by hand. The officers helped.
To make a long, very tense twenty minutes short, it soon became obvious that it was not our trailer.
I couldn't believe it.
Not only did it not have the sticker (but it could have easily been removed), ours was simply in better shape. This one's tires were bald and the wheels were missing their reflectors. The canvas was faded from the sun and there were a few tears on the back that ours did not have. I'll spare you the minute details, but basically, all these things couldn't have been done to our stroller in the few days since it had gone missing.
So, with all those strange coincidences (no bike trailer attachment, it showing up on craigslist the morning after ours was stolen, her strange story about ordering a new part, etc.) it wasn't our trailer afterall. No matter how much we wanted it to be! We were disappointed. And embarrassed.
The police were very nice about everything, even offering to keep an eye on craigslist in case any others showed up. The lady was...mad and very quiet. But seriously, can you blame her? Brad's doctor friends, all pumped for a show-down, slowly filed out of their car asking, "Uh, what just happened?"
So we went home stroller-less. It took about an hour of Brad and I sitting blankly on the couch making comments like, "Did that really just happen?" and "I still can't believe it wasn't ours." and "Did you see that lady's face?!" before we could finally laugh about it all.
Seriously. Did that really happen?! It really did. CRAZY. Bless our hearts.
So we're still hunting for our trailer. (But maybe with less gusto.)
And now we have a good story to tell. One that I'm sure we'll be telling in our family for a long time.
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| In case you see someone wandering around with it, here's a picture of our stroller. In our beloved Seattle last Spring. With my kids inside. So sad it's gone! |
P.S. Please say a prayer for the poor lady who showed up expecting to make $100 bucks and ended up being accused of a crime and questioned by the police instead. We feel bad. Though I don't think, given the situation, we would have done anything differently...Would you?
