To catch a thief

I was robbed in broad daylight at perhaps the safest place in Chico: the Wildcat Recreation Center locker room. There’s only one way in and one way out. Who would do such a thing? Only students, faculty and staff are allowed in. Weren’t we all one big Chico State family? Or was I that naïve?

My iPhone and sunglasses were stolen. So what? Sunglasses come and go. I was eligible for an iPhone upgrade in two weeks. I didn’t give a lick about the iPhone.

All I cared about was content that mattered: my soul. Exactly 1,512 pictures of my family and 47 videos. My new family.

My wife and I were recently married. We had our first baby four months ago. I had backed up only 500 of those pictures, and none of the videos. Yes, my stupidity. But did I have to learn my lesson this way?

The iPhone was my photo album. Our first ultrasound. All the stages of Julia’s pregnancy. Videos of Julia’s 42-hour labor and three hours of pushing without medication. Holden’s first dirty diaper. His first smile. His first Giants game. His first everything—the visual image of our journey was gone.

Perhaps Susan Sontag said it best: “Photographs alter and enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at, and what we have a right to observe.” My life—the people who matter most to me—was in that phone. I was not about to let some dime-store hood take a riotous excursion with privileged glimpses into my heart.

I had to move fast. I could not rely solely on the heroics of the overworked and underappreciated university police. I would go vigilante. Hit the streets myself. Get back my possessions even if it killed me—but not before calling on the services of my No. 1 team of amateur sleuths: a stay-at-home mom and her 4-month-old infant.

It all started with my daily swim in the Chico State swimming pool. Those glistening, restorative waters represent a blissful refuge for me. For 45 minutes a day I can hide underwater, empty my mind, pray and dream. That water heals my soul and makes the next 23 hours and 15 minutes manageable: Little is more taxing than juggling three jobs and being a father for the first time.

The locker room was empty save a few swimming-pool regulars. There are eight rows of lockers. I always choose the lockers on the next-to-last row; that’s where all the older men who are not students but faculty or staff seem to flock. It’s closest to the water. I methodically placed my clothing, gym bag, and personal items in the locker.

A young man entered and sat on the corner bench wedged next to my exposed locker. It made me feel prickly. I’m sensitive about personal-space boundaries. Why had the young man chosen to sit so close to me when there were so many empty lockers around? Are we really that afraid to be alone?

I shook off the thought and entered my digital locker code. The locker is secured by pressing a “C,” then a four-digit number followed by the pound key. The keypad is sensitive. I always punch in the numbers slowly.

Another young man entered the locker room. He gave a fist-bump to the other young man. He started going up and down the lockers to my left and pressing their key pads as if trying to recall where he had put his gear. He acted flustered, but it seemed phony. He kept shouting to his friend: “Where my locker at. You remember? Where my damn locker at?”

I laughed to myself. I thought I was the only one prone to embarrassing lapses of memory like that. As I walked out to the pool, though, something bothered me.

I am a writer. I have a photographic memory when it comes to a person’s vernacular, a person’s physical appearance, and a person’s body language. I study people the way an astronomer studies stars. I am always observing people. My wife tells me all the time not to stare. I am a people-watcher. What writer worth her typewriter ribbon isn’t?

I made a quick, subconscious study of these two young men. I observed their movements. Something seemed unnatural. Further, why had they chosen to change in that section of the locker room?

But by the time I secured my earplugs, strapped on my goggles and nosedived into the warm sapphire water, the locker room was as far away as the 2016 election.

I was back at my locker 45 minutes later. I opened it. Nothing seemed amiss. I grabbed my towel and showered. I put my clothes back on and split. I was halfway out of the locker room when I realized I didn’t have my sunglasses. I went back to the locker. Empty. I patted down my pockets. My iPhone was missing, too. I then remembered my wedding ring was in the side pocket of the gym bag. It was still there. I slipped it on.

I thought maybe I left my phone at my office. I knew I had left my wallet there. I asked at the front desk whether sunglasses had been turned in. Nothing. Had I been robbed? Why didn’t they take my wedding ring? Had the putrid, wet St. Bernard scent wafting from my Five Finger barefoot running shoes deterred them from rifling through the contents of my bag? Maybe I wasn’t robbed? I had to be sure.

I checked back in my office. Nothing. Panic ensued.

I high-tailed it back to the recreation center. I started to believe I really had been robbed, but how? The lockers seemed impossible to break into. I went back into the locker room. It was deserted. I stepped out to the pool. A group of fraternity men were lounging. Was it them? I studied their faces. Could one be wearing my sunglasses?

Wait—what about the two kids who were creeping around when I was changing? Suddenly, they became not only the main suspects, but the only suspects. Who else could have cracked into my locker? There was no one else around. And how obvious now—they had pulled a fast one.

Was I jumping the gun? You can’t pin the tail on the donkey without knowing who or where the donkey is. Wasn’t picking suspects about as random as throwing darts at a stock and hoping you picked a winner?

I searched through all the open lockers. An employee asked if everything was OK. I told him I thought my stuff had been stolen. I still didn’t want to blame someone for merely acting suspicious.

He asked if I had a “Find My iPhone” application. Yes, my wife had set one up for me.

I sprinted back to my office. I phoned her and said I thought my phone had been nicked. I could not hear her; Holden was wailing in her lap. She said she would call me back in five minutes. I called the university police. My wife called back. I was still waiting on the police. Where were they?

“Your phone is at Fourth Avenue and 900 Cedar.”

I was not losing my mind. My phone had been pinched.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Check your email?”

“Why?”

“Just check it.”

I checked my email. Julia had sent three maps, each with a silver dot hovering above a car. My iPhone was supposedly there.

A Chico State family member now possessed my most intimate treasure. Whoever it was had taken it from my sanctum sanctorum. That iPhone was the only tactile link to my family during the nine hours I was sequestered at work. The photos and videos kept me close to them; they got me through the day.

When the police finally arrived at my office, they sat down and asked me the standard questions: “What was taken?” “Where was it taken?” Frustration pulsated though my veins. I explained to them that I had a map leading to my phone. They had a final question, though—the most important one.

“Do you have an idea who took it?”

Oh, I had an idea. However, because I’m a white Berkeley-educated liberal Mississippian with Atticus Finch aspirations, it was an idea that made me uncomfortable and sad: “Both were African-American, 19 or 20 years old,” I said. “One had extremely dark skin, and the other had really light skin.”

Chico State has more than 15,000 students, yet only 1.8 percent of them are black. Did I really have to pin the burglary on the only two black students in the locker room? But they were the only people in the locker room.

I had dedicated my last novel, Ain’t Whistlin’ Dixie No More, to all those who had the nerve to confront racism, expose stereotypes, hyperbolize hypocrisy, empower the disenfranchised, and expunge ignorance. And here I was accusing two young black men of stealing from me based on nothing more than a hunch.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted more, my iPhone back or to discover that these two particular young men were not the malefactors. Maybe I was scared I would be called a racist. What proof did I have that they had pilfered it? I did not want these two young men to be the thieves. Why would it make me feel better if two white kids took the phone?

But this had nothing to do with being black or white. Or did it? No, this was about a crime that was cold and calculated. It was about the reckless abandon of someone wiping away the most precious memories of a stranger’s life, and for what—a couple hundred dollars?

The police took my statement. They got another call and had to leave. They said they would be back in a couple minutes. It turned into an hour. I had in hand the map of where my phone was supposedly located. The longer I waited, the more likely the delinquents would expunge the photographs. The hour glass was upturned.

I took two hours of sick time. I went out into the streets of Chico looking for them. My wife and son were in that phone.

I hot-footed it through the university ’hood searching for the address, but I couldn’t find it. Five students with a plucky “Remember the Alamo” spirit whom I met along the way had joined the search. I asked an old man up on a ladder painting an apartment building if he knew the whereabouts. He smiled. “Son, you’re looking for Fourth Avenue, not Fourth Street.”

I didn’t know there was a difference. I had recently moved here. I got back to my office around 4:00. A different officer arrived. He apologized for the delay and asked for the map. I told him about all the pictures of my wife and son that were on the phone. His eyes were compassionate. Said he had kids and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have all that stolen from him. I knew he would help me.

The officer called shortly thereafter from a huge apartment complex that the silver dot on my map had led him to. He reported that no car occupied that parking space. Turned out the map was outdated.

Only an ember of hope remained. That night I was certain all my pictures were gone. I bawled. My wife told me it would be fine. We had our whole lives to take pictures, she said. But it was a lie. I was an idiot for not saving the pictures. I was a moron for searching for the suspects when I had a wife and infant at home. My bank account would be in the red because I’d have to buy a new $300 phone.

I don’t give up easily. The next morning I went to the Rec Center. The assistant director helped me identify the suspects by going back and watching footage from a surveillance video. We started watching video of all the men who entered the locker room after me. I immediately recognized the two men. They straggled in behind me. That’s all we needed.

The assistant director was able to track back and see the exact time the suspects entered the gym. To enter you punch in your Wildcat I.D. Next, you put your palm on a sensory detector. It scans your fingerprints and matches the two: Open Sesame. She found the suspects’ address; it matched the one provided by the iPhone application.

The police soon knocked on the suspects’ door. It was 60 feet from the silver dot. The suspects were questioned and confessed. They handed over my items. The police had triumphed. Less than 18 hours had elapsed.

By noon, my phone and sunglasses were returned. Every picture remained. The crooks were unable to wipe it clean. Julia had also locked the iPhone—all from her iPad and while breastfeeding an infant. The police were grinning from ear to ear.

Both men said they went home the night before feeling terrible. They understood my loss. It had nothing to do with possessions, but everything to do with memories and love and how pictures keep us connected to our family, to the ones who when harmed turn us vigilante and cast us out into the streets to track down and vanquish the desperados.

Once the celebration had ended (my entire office had gotten caught up in the drama that had unfolded like an episode of CSI: Chico State University), the police asked me the big question that would test my higher mental faculties: Do you want to press charges?

I needed to think about it. I told the policemen I would have an answer by 5 o’clock. I went back to the pool, the scene of the crime, and plunged into the still waters. I would exit only when I had made a sound decision.

It was a long, uncomfortable swim. My mind was ringing with Emerson: “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” If two white kids had stolen from me, I would have pressed charges instantly. Yet, it was two black kids who had committed the crime: I had to think about it?

Maybe I should be nice and let them go. After all, they had returned everything. But would it be nicer to press charges and have them punished now rather than down the line? What about the next guy they robbed? Would they learn their lesson? I would rather have Judicial Affairs expel them from the university than press charges.

The police, however, informed me that most students get only probation. Could I have the two young men come into my office and explain their actions? Could I assign them Kant’s Categorical Imperative? Couldn’t I give them a week to read James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain? They could come back and tell me how and why it changed their life.

Certainly, if I didn’t press charges, I would be entitled to a month of self-righteousness for giving two young black men in Butte County a second chance.

But wait a minute. These were university students, adults—not preschool children—who knew the difference between right and wrong. And if they didn’t know the difference, then they needed to go back to preschool and learn it.

I had made my decision. I was at peace. I would press charges. This was not about race but about crime. Life is a sum of all your choices. These two kids had made a bad choice; they would have to deal with the consequences.

Mark Twain said not to let school interfere with your education. What these young men needed was an education, not school.

When I was little my mother used to say that Jesus would meet me halfway. Now, I don’t think Jesus was too concerned about my iPhone, but the police—and the good friends in my office and those students who were helping me roam the streets—were. I had to walk at least half the distance. Isn’t that our job as citizens?

When it comes to crime you must be a self-advocate. Go back and read Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.” Understand it when he says, “The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.” Don’t merely depend on dialing 911 and gnash your teeth because the police didn’t respond with the quickness of greased lightning. They’re busy. It’s a tough, thankless job. Can you imagine?

Sometimes we have to meet them halfway. Be suspicious. Be paranoid. Give those whom you are suspicious of the benefit of the doubt, but make sure you prove your doubt wrong. Justify it. Get yourself a tracking application. Back up your pictures. Hire yourself a stay-at-home mom and her 4-month-old infant crime fighter who wears a Sherlock Holmes cap and smokes a pipe.

And never steal from a writer.