FROM MARK:
After attending my first NAMM music trade show in CA (see separate blog for that adventure), Tammy and I headed off to Hawaii for a week.  Had a great time in Oahu, mostly in the Waikiki and North Shore area. Got some great pictures!

Won't be showing you those, as it turns out, because:

 On the last day of our trip (1/28) we stopped for lunch on way to airport.  Parked in front of Macy's entrance, where there was a lot of traffic, and the car was visible from Macy's door.  Spent about an hour or so at lunch.

 Returned to car to find driver's handle forced, 2 bags stolen.  We seek assistance from Macy's staff-

Macy's security team says, "yeah, that spot gets robbed ALL the time.  It's between cameras and can't be monitored.  The thieves come in and buy gift cards with the stolen credit cards."  Huh, they seem to be VERY familiar with the robber's techniques.  Interesting…  didn't help much that they were grinning and giggling the whole time too. 

I call and cancel all credit/gas cards.  Tammy gives police report.  The local Honolulu police officer is very helpful.  Cops search known 'dump spots' where luggage may have been discarded.  Find nothing.

 We proceed to turn in rental car.  Head to airport.  Call Tammy's mother who's house-sitting for us to advise and give last minute arrival details.  She informs us that she's extremely ill (can barely speak) and that we'll need to find someone else to pick us up from the airport.  We have about 1 hour left at this point to arrange this before getting on the plane, and my cellphone with most of our contacts is stolen.  I wonder what would have happened if we hadn't called her…

 Robber got: backpack with my cellphone, dig camera (borrowed from friends), 2 camera mem cards, wallet with gas cards and 2 credit cards, contact book/journal with years of notes/online passwords, all the contacts and freebies I'd collected at NAMM trade show, plane boarding passes, debit card receipts for whole trip, luggage bag with our best clothes and half the gifts we'd bought to bring back to friends.

 Tammy calls stolen cellphone, just in case.  Ya never know. No answer.

We proceed to the airport bar for a dose of tranquilizers…

 Then it gets weird.

 
Tammy notices a missed call from my stolen cellphone.  She calls it back.

Someone answers.  Tammy says, "Uh, this is our missing phone…"

Person replies: "Yeah, you're not going to like this story very much."

"I'm a drug addict.  Sorry I stole your stuff."
Says only thing of value was the camera, "I sold it, it's in my lungs now."

  Apparently, for some reason he feels bad for stealing our stuff.  Probably because he pretty much got nothing of much monetary value.  Offers to email our vacation pictures to us since he kept the flash cards.  As tammy hesitates to give our email address, he say; "don't worry, I don't know enough about computers to send you a virus or anything, I just want to get your pictures to you." We tell him a gig and a half of pics is going to take quite a while to upload…  (I hoped we could convince him to mail the cards.  Maybe he'd be dumb enough to put a return address on the envelope, you never know.  Then we could be on Leno!)  He says "I guess so."

He also commends us on our speedy cancellation of credit and gas cards.  "I wasn't able to use any of them!  Great job!"

then he says, "Well, since nothing else of yours was of value, I'll leave luggage behind 7-11. Then you can come pick it up."  We say we're about to get on the plane, can't do that. 

 "OK, then, did you file a police report?  Call cops to retrieve."  Tammy takes this opportunity to appeal to his already panged conscience.  She lays it on thick.  "We're just average, hard-working people.  We don't have a whole lot of value, as you discovered.  We even borrowed that digital camera from a friend, it's not even ours."

He says "well, I'll call you back with the location" and abruptly hangs up.

  We call the police to see if they'll retrieve our stolen goods if he'd actually drop them, and apparently they will.
They'll go start searching now, in fact.

 
After boarding plane, before the mandatory cellphone shutoff (what's that all about, anyway) he hasn't called back yet.  So we figure what the heck, we'll call him.  He answers.  Tammy asks if he's dropped off the stolen stuff for the cops to pick up yet.  We're about to take off, need to make final arrangements.

He says:  'Ok, here's the deal"

Excitedly informs us he just stole $3000 from another car, so now has enough money to ship all stolen goods back.  What about the drop off for cops to retrieve?  that's not such a good idea after all.  I don't really trust the cops to get your stuff back to you.  I'll just ship it to you"

Tammy says, wow, if you'll really do that we'll send you some money.  He says, no you don't have to do that, I just want to get your stuff back to you.  "I'm packing it all up now.  In fact, I sold that camera to a guy for $10.    If I can, I'll send it back too…"

"so, your husband's a drummer, huh?"  There was a pair of drumsticks in the backpack, and all the NAMM info and freebies I'd collected in CA.  He gives Tammy his full name (!!!) but she can't hear him, as pilot is running thru the preflight announcements. Tammy asks if he needs our shipping address; He reads back all our personal info and business address, which we never gave him. Guess he got it from some of the paperwork in the luggage/backpack.

 We Turn phone off. for 9 hr flight from HI to New Orleans. 

  Arrive early Monday am.  Turn on phone.  Several desperate voicemails have been left.

Apparently, Crackhead McGee, the conscience-stricken thief, scored some REALLY good drugs after that last $3k robbery.  In his euphorious state, he decides to browse the address book in my cellphone and check in on some of my contacts.  Voicemail messages indicate he called:

• My dad, and shared with him a seafood recipe. Apparently he also makes mention of my band (he got a pair of my sticks and a bunch of stickers and promo CDs in my backpack)  My dad thinks one of my friends is pranking him and tells the guy to give me my phone back.  The thief tells him 'I'll be sending you a carepackage soon, be looking for it…"  he must have gotten confused as to who he's talking to.
• My mom, and scared her half to death.  He gave the impression that we had arranged a drug deal with him and then fled the scene, so she thought we were either kidnapped by drug dealers or on the run for our lives. 
• Our home and left a message singing the praises of the shrimp combo.  I guess maybe he was at a restaurant while making all these calls.  It was a nice little ditty though, he had a pretty good singing voice. 

Of course all these calls occurred very late Sunday night/Monday morning, as he was in HI calling my contacts on the mainland. 

 
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, several days ago Tammy's mom wrote about seven hundred dollars worth of checks out of our account for vet bills when her dog almost died from eating  a rotten potato in the back of my van (how did that get there?!!!).  We have some major carpet cleaning expenses around the bend after that episode as well…   so she doesn't tell us about that slight dip into the cash flow until we return.  End of the month is not a good time to do this….

We're just lucky that she didn't end up in the hospital herself, as it turns out that she decided to sample some of the 'candies' on my desk which were in fact bergamot bath salts from Pottery Barn.  Wish I could have seen her reaction as she spit it out~  (she admitted that it tasted like biting a stinkbug; and yes she DOES know firsthand what that tastes like, but that's a whole different story.  Something to do with everything puckering that can pucker.  Too much info?)

 Also turns out that there's been some kind of security breach at our bank, so our debit cards (along with our IDs, the ONLY thing not stolen in HI) are being cancelled and reissued in a week.  So we basically have no way of paying for anything now, except cash- and we use the HECK out of those debit cards these days.  Money?  What's money?!!

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it's about 2 weeks later, and of course we haven't heard from the thief, or received any returned goods.

Not that we expected any.  But that would be the only thing that could make this story any stranger, I think.

 
Finally, just a couple days ago my friend Rob calls.
"hey man, did you call me late Sunday night?"
 "nope, but I think I know who did…"