Here’s a crime with a happy ending: a Bremerton woman who tracked down her GPS device after it was stolen from her car.
How’d she get it back, you ask?
Astrid, 29, went over to her local pawn shop.
A friend of hers had recommended she do so after her Magellan Roadmate was taken from her car overnight in early November.
She’d been soured by the theft, the second time her GPS had been taken from her car (she says her husband had forgotten to lock it).
When she went to the pawn shop to see if thieves had sold it there, an employee said she needed the GPS’ serial number. Thankfully, she still had it on the box it came in.
She gave the number to the employee, who checked their inventory on a computer.
“As soon as he hit the enter key,” she said, “His eyes grew bigger.”
The simple lesson here is that checking one place, she got her property back. Even attempting to have the insurance cover it — adding in what could be a costly deductible — would have been more complicated.
And Astrid not only got her GPS device back, but she helped the police cease — at least temporarily — other thefts.
How, you ask?
An officer went to the pawn shop and found out who sold the GPS device. He then went to that man’s house, and after finding out he had help, two people were arrested, and will be prosecuted for it.
So in this short tale are three lessons:
1. lock up your stuff;
2. keep the serial numbers of your stuff;
3. if your stuff gets stolen, conduct some simple due diligence (file a police report and check area pawn shops).
