That One Time I Found My iPhone in a Homeless Lady's Shopping Bag

So you know the iPhone 4 I bought on Craigslist to replace the iPhone 4s someone stole in the Castro in January to replace the original iPhone 4 someone stole in Vegas in July? 

Last Thursday, someone stole that one too.

I couldn't believe that it could have happened a third time.  I am baffled as to why this chronic theft keeps plaguing me.  I don't think it's bad karma because I try to live a relatively charitable lifestyle that includes donating to good causes and sharing my pizza with homeless people (although I might lose points for periodically subjecting my Lyft drivers to exuberant renditions of "Let it Go" from Frozen, which is probably not the thing they want to sit through most at 3 in the morning).

Anyway, back to the iPhone.

It started at the Whole Foods Parking Lot.

For those of you who don't know, part of my job includes standing outside of grocery stores and explaining a confusing tax law to random passerby who have never heard of it and then guilt-shaming them into giving me money to reform this law that they have only just heard of. 

As I began greeting strangers in the overly-excited fashion that has become second nature, a security guard came up and explained that I first needed permission from the property owner to harass people.  He pointed to a sign at the front of the parking lot.  I walked to the sign to copy down the phone number and then walked back to my post. 

A truly petrifying sight greeted me. 

The messenger bag that I had set down not twenty seconds before had disappeared, along with my wallet, keys, credit cards, and, of course, my phone. 

I started panicking.  NOT AGAIN, my brain screamed at me.  I started running up and down the Whole Foods entrances, glaring suspiciously at every kale-clutching hipster and yoga-mat-brandishing mother in sight. 

I waved the security guard over and logged onto his Find my iPhone app.  With a jolt, I realized my phone was a few blocks away.  As I stood there fretting, a random guy with tattooed biceps came up and asked me what was wrong. 

After summarizing my predicament to him, he decided to assist me because, he explained, "I'm in a spiritual place in my life right now where I want to help people in need".  I didn't question this and felt only gratitude that my misfortune had coincided with this man's random phase of righteous altruism.

He called his equally-tough-looking friend over and drove us to the street my phone was supposedly at. 

As we entered the gate of the complex, tattooed guy murmured nervously to his friend, "Yo, you know what territory we're in, right?" 

I wasn't sure what to do with that statement, so I started banging loudly on people's doors because I also do that for a living.  Except the conversations went even more awkwardly than they do normally. 

Naturally, this method did not reap much success.  After a while, we gave up. 

The tattooed guy asked if he could have my number.

I said no because I didn't have a phone. 

Before going to bed that night, I pulled up Find my iPhone again on my laptop and saw that my phone's location had moved a couple of blocks, by a bunch of industrial buildings. 

The next morning, I refreshed the app again and saw that the little green dot hadn't budged.  Weird.  "Maybe someone chucked it in the trash," my friend offered. 

Another glace at the screen told me that my phone's battery life was dangerously low.  It was now or never.  A sudden feeling of reckless determination came over me.

I drove to 3rd Ave, playing out fantasies in my head about rescuing my phone from a dumpster (my fantasies are glamorous indeed). Upon arriving, however, I quickly realized that the Google Maps picture was not an accurate reflection of the region.  Instead of cars lining the street, there were homeless people.  Myriads of them.  With stuff.  Lots and lots of stuff. 

Taking in the sheer amount of stuff piled up the sidewalk, I started to despair.  There was no way I could sort through all that stuff.

I called the police department that I had filed a report with the day before, and they said they might send someone over if they had nothing better to do.  That did not seem promising.

As I stood on the sidewalk wondering what to do, a van pulled up and two cops came out. They started talking to the homeless people and asking them to turn out their pockets. 

I walked over, happy to see the police for the first time in my delinquent life.

"Did you get my message?" I asked them brightly. 

They hadn't.

One of the cops, who was very nice, told me to hold on while he searched a bearded and pierced man for drugs.  

"What's that, Richard?" he asked, pointing to a green tube in the man's backpack.

"That is my weed," he replied. 

"Oh, that's cool. I don't care about that," the nice cop said.  I wish the police had said similar things to me in my college years.  

When he was done, he pulled up the iPhone tracker app.  The cop that was with him wasn't as nice and asked skeptically if "those things are even accurate".  I could tell the less nice cop didn't want to help me. 

"It's extremely accurate," the nice cop said and I looked smugly at the mean cop.  

He pushed the alarm button and...

...we heard my phone's alarm ringing.

Flabbergasted, I stood there as he started digging through the mounds of stuff to find it.  Finally, he identified a homeless lady's shopping bag as the source of the noise.  I watched breathlessly as he pulled out dozens of items until finally, at the very bottom, we found my phone. 

"Anita, where did you get this?" he questioned the homeless lady.

"Some guy came over and sold it to me yesterday for thirty bucks," she said.  I felt momentarily offended that the thief felt that my phone was only worth $30.  

He handed me my phone and I felt as if I was reunited with a long-lost child.  

"We tried to give you a chance, Anita," the mean cop said and started handcuffing the lady. Uh oh.  

"Wait, don't do that," I protested.  They looked at me.  "Can I drop the charges? She didn't steal my phone." 

The nice cop explained that receiving stolen goods was a felony and the mean cop added I couldn't drop the charges because I filed a police report. Oh. 

 **Update**: Today a detective called me to follow up and I was able to drop the charges, so everyone wins!

Anita took some selfies on my phone before I arrived

In all seriousness, even though I've had the misfortune of having my phone stolen three times in the past year, the generosity and general goodness of all the random strangers who helped me last week has more than kept my faith alive in the decency of humankind. From the security guard who helped me look in trashcans and insisted I text him with updates and the various folks who trusted me with their phones to the tattooed guy who helped me knock on the doors of an apparently dangerous hood and the police officer who came to my aid when he didn't have to, I've definitely been moved by the kindness shown to me throughout this whole little adventure. 

And at the end of the day, wallets and keys and phones are just objects, you know?  I've forced myself to remember this fact when I start panicking and sinking into despair over the loss of these possessions.  We blow the importance of our smartphones and material goods way out of proportion at times.  What matters really is human interaction.  How we treat and love each other.  Our connections and friendships.  When it's all stripped down, that's all we have.

That said, I'm definitely grateful that I don't have to go out and get a new phone now.  I don't think I could find one for anything close to thirty bucks.