The night I got robbed, met my burglar, and took my stuff back

A true tale of San Francisco

A few weeks ago my house got robbed. I won’t bore you too much with the particulars of my social calendar on the night of the robbery, but suffice it to say that I had spent that evening at a pleasant-enough party hosted by a prominent Twitter personality. (This is the main type of party hosted in San Francisco.) By the time I came back home from that lovely soirée it was about midnight. I wanted to write a reminder for the next day about something or other, so I went to the desk in my living room where I’d left my computer. But when I looked there the computer was gone. I was searching for it around the house, thinking that perhaps I’d misplaced the thing, when I noticed that my porch door was open. Thinking that something might have gone awry I looked on my iPhone’s Find My app and saw that the computer was, at that very moment, traveling somewhere on Market Street. And so my heart sank a little.

For those unfamiliar with the social geography of San Francisco, Market Street is a corner of the city over which law and order has not yet settled; like other lawless or semi-lawless lands it is peopled densely with ne’er-do-wells, assorted dysfunctionals, legitimate unfortunates, rogues, and above all a thick crusting of veteran narcotists. I occasionally take night strolls through Market Street and another rather notorious part of town called the Tenderloin. I can say with confidence, having been to those places and also to the nastier parts of Kabul, that San Francisco’s rotten boroughs are a good deal worse, and altogether not a place one should wish to be after sundown.

So I did not entertain much thought of venturing into Market Street to reclaim my belongings. It is one thing to walk silently through that district and say nothing to its denizens, who anyway are typically more interested in their own pharmacological adventures than in anything else. But going to Market Street at midnight with the intent of reclaiming an expensive device that was just stolen was another matter. So I did as a good citizen ought to do and I called the San Francisco Police Department. I told them to come over as soon as they could, because my house had been robbed; and, since my roommate was asleep, I asked if they could do me a small favor and not ring the doorbell once they’d arrived.

A few cops came to my house and they immediately rang the doorbell. I muttered a profanity to myself and came to meet them in my gym clothes. They were led by a friendly officer with tight tattooed biceps who looked vaguely Polynesian and spoke with an overly casual millennial air. I told him that I had the live location of my computer on Find My and asked if I could accompany a small company of cops to Market Street so that I could track my stuff and they could find the guy who’d broken into my house. He replied that they didn’t “do” Find My—I assumed this was for some legal or evidentiary reason but later research suggested it was just institutionalized laziness—and said that they’d instead send a patrol car to Market Street to see if they could spot the computer. That endeavor seemed obviously futile and even as they were announcing it to me it seemed like they regarded it as a pointless gesture done exclusively for my psychological satisfaction. Neither they nor I were surprised when, five or ten minutes later, they heard that the patrol hadn’t managed to spot anyone carrying an Apple computer through Market Street.

So the cops decided that they’d instead investigate the building next to my house, which is a derelict nursing home of some kind, and see if they could figure out how the thief clambered onto my porch in the first place. The friendly Polynesian officer advised me to file a police report and thanked me for calling them, and then he and the other officers tiptoed into the abandoned nursing home with a few shotguns and disappeared for what would turn out to be three hours. One cop, a reedy Hispanic who reminded me of the old Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, stayed behind to watch the surroundings. Within a minute or two he was scrolling on his phone.

Not what happened

By this point I was getting quite frustrated. I was looking at Find My on my phone and could see that the burglar was still walking around Market Street with my computer. Every 20 minutes or so I would get an update about his general location, and I would tell the Jorge Posada lookalike, and the Jorge Posada lookalike would react with a genial sort of disinterest and go back to his phone, and I’d go back to looking at Find My.

Around 3:30am I looked at Find My and saw that the computer was headed in my general direction: the burglar seemed to be walking north from Market. I thought that if I got the timing right I could perhaps intercept him. I had some adrenaline left in me and decided that it was worth a try, so I told the Jorge Posada lookalike that I was going on a walk to decompress and began to go toward where I thought the burglar would be. I was still wearing my gym clothes.

About a third of a mile from my house, I walked by a man carrying a large Burlington Coat Factory bag. We were the only people around. Once I had passed him I saw on Find My that the computer was right behind me.

I wheeled backward and strode toward the man and asked if he had a computer with him. He turned around and stopped and responded in the affirmative. He sounded wary and from the shakiness of his voice I could tell that he was high.

I still had adrenaline in my blood and wanted to press my case. “Well,” I said, “did you take it from my house?”

He said he hadn’t taken it from my house and seemed offended that I’d asked. I didn’t know how to respond—it seemed obvious that he had taken it from my house, but I didn’t want to start yelling at him—so I decided to act like we were both gentlemen and indulge him in the whole stupid charade. I asked where he’d gotten the computer if he hadn’t taken it from my house. He said he’d found it on the street somewhere.

“Well,” I said, “someone took a computer from my house a few hours ago.” I asked if I could take a look and see if the computer he was carrying was my computer.

He said sure. It occurred to me that we were both trying to keep up the appearance of propriety. He showed me the Burlington Coat Factory bag he was carrying, and I saw that it contained not only my computer but also my roommate’s computer and his Kindle, which I hadn’t realized had been stolen as well. I told him that this was indeed my stuff and asked if I could have it back. He said sure and gave me the bag. I thanked him awkwardly and began to walk away, and as I began to walk toward my house he repeated aloud that he had just found the stuff on the street. Then he began walking in a different direction.

By the time I made it back home it was about 4:30am. The police had begun ambling out of the nursing home, which the Polynesian officer informed me reminded them of Resident Evil. I hadn’t played Resident Evil or seen the movies but wanted to be polite so I said “wow” as though I had. When I told them I’d gotten my stuff back they were amazed. The Polynesian said he’d never heard of that happening before and the Jorge Posada lookalike said that I should get a badge. (For a moment I wondered if the badge thing could be arranged, but then thought that he was just trying to be nice.)

The cops told me they’d found a few half-eaten sandwiches in the abandoned nursing home and surmised that the local vagrants had made the place something of an abode; and furthermore that someone had managed to make his way from the porch of the nursing home onto my porch, and from there walked into my house. They advised me to be more vigilant about locking my porch doors and to consider investing in a security camera. I agreed.

My adrenaline had faded at this point and the millennialness of the officers had begun to grate on me. When they asked if I wanted to give them the physical details of the guy I’d “confronted” I just told them that it was a white guy with a slight beard who looked like he was on drugs, and that there were thousands of people who looked like that—some of them vagrants and some of them tech people—so it’s not like they were going to catch the guy anyway. There wasn’t much of a pretense that they were intent on looking for him.

By this point I was exhausted and deliriously happy. It was about 5am, I had not slept at all, and I had calls that were scheduled to start in three hours. I wished the officers a good night, thanked them warmly and completely insincerely for their service, and made my way home to sleep.

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Warm thanks to my friend Ryan McEntush for sharing this story on Twitter a few weeks ago. He did a great job, I just wanted to write it up myself.