I was robbed today. Well, actually (according to the nice Red Oak police sergeant) it was a theft. I guess to be absolutely precise, it was a larceny ("the unlawful taking of personal property with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it permanently"); when I talk about it, it's a lot simpler to say "I was robbed" rather than "I was the victim of a theft/larceny."
Our office is in Red Oak. It's a small town, typically a safe town I guess. Our building is the only one on the street, and we're at quite a distance from the cluster of businesses along Ovilla Rd. There are two front doors to our building: The south door leads to the dentist's office, and that door is only unlocked when the dentist's office is open. Our wing, the north wing, holds only two tenants, neither of which business has walk-in visitors. Our exterior entrance is on electronic lock and requires a passcard for admittance.
So for anyone to access the north wing, they either have to have a passcard, knock at our outside door for admittance, or enter at the dentist's side of the building and walk around to our side. Apparently that's what this creep did.
After the dentist had seen the last patient of the day, one of her staff was working at their front desk and saw through their glass office door when a man entered from the south door and walked past their office and headed down the hallway. She even commented "wonder where he's going?" since he used their entrance.
Meanwhile, I was alone in our office. John (my son-in-law boss) is traveling this week. I was working in his office for an hour or so. While sitting at his desk, I heard a sound that appeared to come from my office. I was intent on what I was doing and didn't pick up on it at first. Then I heard another slight sound. I 'knew' no one was in my office, but I had a funny feeling, so I stepped into my office and saw that the door was closed as I had left it. So I assumed the sounds I'd heard had come from the adjoining office.
It wasn't until more than two hours later that I remembered that I hadn't checked the mailbox outside. I went to my purse to get the mailbox key and the passcard that would let me back in the building. That's when I discovered that my wallet was gone.
You know how it goes. When something is supposed to be there, and it's not, you think at first that somehow you're just not seeing it, that by some Twilight Zone sort of trickery that it's just not readily visible. And when that happened, when I rooted frantically through the purse and didn't find the wallet, I thought that somehow I must have carried it into John's office and laid it down, so I ran in there to search. Of course I hadn't done that, there's no reason in the world I would have done that, but I looked anyway. Then I raced out to my truck, thinking it might have fallen out of my purse (!) when I was driving to work. It wasn't in the truck.
In my panic, I had forgotten that in the morning I had made an online payment, printed out the receipt, and put that receipt in my wallet. So the wallet had definitely been in my purse before noon.
So sitting in my truck I called the police. They told me to hang tight, that an officer would be there in a few minutes (if it had been Dallas, I'd still be waiting for the police to show up). I had to knock on the window of the next-door tenant and get them to let me back in the building, since my passcard was in the wallet. Before I could even call the bank to report my debit card stolen, the officer was there to take the report. The dentist's employee pulled up the records of the electronic door and it indicated that there was two exits made at midday, and not again until the time I went out to the truck to search. Midday is when I was in John's office working. So apparently some guy opened my office door quietly, walked in quietly, saw my purse sitting on the floor behind my desk, and took his chance.
Normally I carry a purse that's kind of deep and the wallet tucks down at the bottom. Today I had a purse with a smaller mouth, and after I made the online payment I remember sticking the wallet back in on end (rather than laying flat) because the small opening made it harder to reach down inside. Lucky for the thief: that meant the wallet was plainly visible and easier to grab.
But I am definitely lucky as well. Because I got on the phone and canceled my debit card and my three gasoline cards, and none of them had been used, even though it had probably been three hours since the theft. The police officer said maybe the guy just grabbed the $48 in the wallet and tossed the wallet away. He searched all around the building and in the dumpster, even drove back to where the street deadends at a field, and didn't find it.
If the thief had grabbed the little green bag next to the wallet, he would've gotten my car & house key - and with my driver's license, he had my address. That would have been a nightmare. So all things considered I guess I'm fortunate.
But I don't feel fortunate. I feel damn mad. And I guarantee that I'm keeping the office door locked from now on, even when I'm there.
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