The Grinch Who Stole My iPhone

By Haddon Libby

Two weeks before Christmas, my daughter and I were at a grocery store.  In the produce aisle, we found an iPhone 6.  We gave it to the store manager for its eventual return to the rightful owner.

Only 72 hours earlier, we had been at another store where my iPhone 6 fell out of my pocket.  When I realized that the phone was missing, I activated the tracking service embedded in my phone.  I got no response as the phone was ‘offline’.  As the battery was fully charged, the only explanation was that the person who had found my phone had turned it off.  As this phone has a feature that allows me to send a message to the holder of the phone, I asked for its return and offered a reward.

I waited patiently for the holder of my phone to turn it on.  On Monday night at 10:13pm, the phone was turned on, albeit briefly.  I now knew the location of my phone.

When I went to that address the next morning, the woman who answered the door said that she did not have it and no one had been at her house that night.  As such, I went to their next door neighbor who didn’t have it but offered to help in finding it.

By the end of Tuesday, the store provided video footage of the theft.  From that footage, we saw that the phone slipped out of my pocket.  The footage also showed the person behind me in line made a beeline for my phone once dropped.

Given that I had video footage of the perpetrator, a ping from that residence and visual confirmation from a neighbor that the perpetrator stayed at that home regularly, you would think that we’d have a quick resolution.  Nope.

As the crime occurred in Palm Desert, the case reverted to the Sheriff’s department.  Sheriff Stan Sniff shared two things with me: 1) he would not let the perpetrator get away, and; 2) this type of situation was all too common following the passage of Proposition 47 last year.  That law took the teeth away from law enforcement on petty crimes making them misdemeanors and removing the threat of a felony being placed on the criminal’s record.  Given that the D.A. was not prosecuting many of these low level crime cases due to thin resources, many in law enforcement were discouraged.

An early challenge in this case had been that the woman in the house would not cooperate.  A week after the theft, the sheriff was able to rule out her boyfriend.  If he was innocent, why be uncooperative?

As for my Grinch who grabbed my iPhone, can you identify him from the pictures?  While the police may probably know who it is by the time this hits the presses, sometimes it takes a community to begin identifying and weeding out the bad guys, however petty they may be.

Like Whoville, we are a small community that needs to work together to make people who do bad things uncomfortable.  Whether it is a petty crime, white collar crime, household violence or something more severe, we should never be tolerant of bad behavior.

While the police do their work, take a look at the picture of this local Grinch.  We will have a better picture of him and his friend in a future column.  If you think you know who he is or where he works, please drop us a note at CVWeeklyiphone@gmail.com.  Anyone with information that helps us find him will receive a reward.

More next week…