A Story

About a month and a half ago I was running on the Round Lake High School Track on a Sunday afternoon, and had just completed a long (for me) run and was standing on the track drinking water and gasping for breath. The last few laps of my run I had watched four young men walk down the hill from Macgee and across the baseball fields. As they ambled toward the far end of the track I continued to watch them as I was recovering from my run, since my car was parked in the approach to the track with no one else around, the windows were open and my wallet was tucked in the glove compartment.

They walked past my car and disappeared behind the snack bar, I then turned to pick up my shirt and looked back, seconds later, as one of the kids was diving into the passenger side of my car and yanking open my glove compartment and grabing my wallet and took off running.

So did I, my initial thought was to catch the kids and beat the hell out of them. I ran past my car without looking in, I guessed that they had nabbed my phone as well, they had not. Sadly after running 4 miles a few minutes earlier and then having to chase four 14 year olds my closing speed was zip. So I shouted at them hoping they would flip my wallet, so at least I would not have to explain to the first lady how we had to call on all our credit cards and get new ones.

I chased them to the corner of Sunset and Long Lake Drive, before coming to my senses and them vanishing off in the distance. What would I have done if I had caught them? It was only a wallet that had $30 bucks or so in it. Was it worth squaring up to four teens?

So I trudged back to my car, looking on both sides of street to see if my wallet had been discarded and I had just missed it being thrown aside. I found my phone in my car much to my surprise and called the cops. Quite quickly one showed up, and I filed a report.

A few days later the same officer called me an asked me to come into the downtown area and see if I could identify 4 kids who were wandering around by the train station. I sat and watched them and realized that if I said yes that's them, they would be arrested, but here's the thing I was not 100% sure, 60% sure but not 100%. I had seem them from at closest 50 yards away and mostly from behind, as I chased them.

Since then I had pretty much given up on finding the wallet, and had called all my credit cards in and gotten replacements. The thing that bothered me the most was losing my driver license which with all the talk about Identity Theft gave me a chill. Plus I was embarrased as hell since I thought I had more common sense then that as well.

So fast forward to last week, we had some young punks who had been causing trouble in the southern parts of Round Lake and finally crossed the line with a major crime, burglary, our officers nabbed the kids the next day when they got off the school bus. They recovered all the stolen merchandise, and later with the parent of the boys searched the house and lo and behold guess what they found? My wallet, with all the credit cards, my badge and my drivers license.

I found it an interesting feeling to be the victim of a crime, I have felt anger, irritation, embarassment, vengeful, and finally relief that we found the wallet. In addtion we were able to stop these kids and get all the much more valuable things that were stolen in the burglary back as well.