Advice re: stolen MacBook Pro

[oliviathunderkitty]

A good friend had her MacBook Pro stolen from her home near Juliard Park in Santa Rosa. The theft took place around 8:30 or so last night. She's doing all she can--calling the police (who did not take fingerprints), speaking with neighbors (who saw a man lurking near her back window)--but I'm wondering if anyone has any good ideas about tracking it down. People have suggested looking on Craigslist, visiting Santa Rosa pawn shops and such, all of which she is doing.

Any other advice?

The theft occurred while she and another friend and I were celebrating my birthday at a Santa Rosa restaurant so although I do not feel responsible, of course, I would like to help however I can.

thanks for any tips.

["Mad" Miles]

Olivathunderkitty,

Sorry your friend was burgled. The advice she's been given is sound. Perhaps an offer of a reward for the laptops return? No questions asked?

I just wrote a post outlining my experiences with crime in the last five years. The timeout on my logon flushed it. And yes Barry, I used the "back" function, to no avail.

In sum, the following mistakes on my part have enabled criminals to rip me off. I know you only asked for advice on retrieving her laptop, not crime prevention. But your post has given me the prompt to share what I've learned.

Please! I'm not trying to tell your friend that it was her fault. That's not what I intend here. I do want to share the limited, and hard, lessons that I've learned from having been a victim of property crime, and of assault in one instance. It's not her fault. It wasn't my fault. But in retrospect I did make some mistakes, which I describe below:

Not locking my briefcase in the trunk while parked in the garage behind the Roxy 14 cineplex. And leaving the windows cracked too wide on a hot afternoon, wide enough for someone with skinny wrists to reach in and pop the locks.

Carrying my checkbook in said briefcase.

Not password locking my cell phone. (Separate incident.)

Not pulling the face plate from my car stereo and stashing it out of sight, when parked at a friends in North Berkeley overnight. (Leaving there late on the fourth, there was an electronic sign just feet from where I'd parked, warning about car break-ins and urging people to make police reports if they happened. This, two years after my stereo was ripped.)

Opening my drivers side window to argue with an irate asshole who'd been trailing me after a traffic contretemp and he had left his vehicle to walk up and confront me.

Lessons learned?

See above for "don't do this."

Carry pepper spray in a convenient location in your car.

My experiences making police reports, in three of the four instances above (I didn't report the missing cell, I'd left it behind by accident. I only told the management at the pub where I'd had breakfast.) was less than satisfactory.

In the case of the assault, I insisted on making a report, having them take prints from my window glass where the perp had grasped the half opened window when he tried to break it off to get better access to me, and viewing a photo "line-up". They pretty much discouraged me at every step. And left me cooling my heals in the waiting area for extended periods.

Being ripped off, let alone pummelled in the face, is a violation of our person. We feel like we've been kicked in the stomach. It takes a while for that trauma to fade.

Any means to destress should be used. The company of sympathetic friends, moderate alchohol consumption, massage, warm baths, pleasant distractions, etc.

Again, sorry your friend was ripped off. But I would encourage her to not invest too much emotional energy into seeking the recovery of her property. Odds are, it isn't going to happen. It's worth the effort, just to say you tried your best, but getting obsessed about it isn't going to help.

(And I'm not saying she will "get obsessed", but from my own experience, it's very tempting to resist letting go. Given that the theft happened last night, it's definitely too soon to impart this part of my advice to her. She'll need time, and will most likely reach that conclusion on her own. She may have already. I'm just speaking from my own response to loss and anger.)

What she can actively do is harden her home security. And do her best to move on. Easy for others to say, I know. But based on my own experiences, it's what makes sense to me.

Hopefully she had her data backed up?

[Sciguy]

I have no advice that will help your friend in her present scrape but I can offer some advice for her in the future or for others.

I like to console myself that there are many good people out there who would like to return goods if they can. I take note that I have never had an item stolen but I have lost all manner of goods due to my own fault. So I suggest that helping good people to return your lost goods is great insurance.

In that regard, print out tiny labels with your name, email and phone number and make sure that one of those labels is on the back of your phone, your computer, your mp3 player, your camera and anything else you carry around. And it wouldn't hurt to put one inside the battery case of your computer in case it is stolen by some nincompoop who doesn't even check.

I left my fanny pack with EVERYTHING in it on a sightseeing bus in New York City. The next morning it was at the tour bus office intact. There are good people everywhere.

Sciguy


A good friend had her MacBook Pro stolen from her home near Juliard Park in Santa Rosa. The theft took place around 8:30 or so last night. She's doing all she can--calling the police (who did not take fingerprints), speaking with neighbors (who saw a man lurking near her back window)--but I'm wondering if anyone has any good ideas about tracking it down. People have suggested looking on Craigslist, visiting Santa Rosa pawn shops and such, all of which she is doing.

Any other advice?

The theft occurred while she and another friend and I were celebrating my birthday at a Santa Rosa restaurant so although I do not feel responsible, of course, I would like to help however I can.

thanks for any tips.

[podfish]

.... I just wrote a post .... The timeout on my logon flushed it. And yes Barry, I used the "back" function, to no avail....
sorry for the off-topic (maybe Barry can move this to a more appropriate place), but a hillbilly backup can be done by occasionally selecting all the text and using the editor's copy command. That'll keep it in the paste buffer. Sadly I've had to learn that technique for some tech-support websites I use at work that have aggressive timeouts.

[debbus]

Had my brand new macbook and ipod stolen out of my rental car in seattle a couple of years ago. I NEVER leave anything in my car now. I filed police reports etc, but to no avail.
Good luck