Phone Gone

Josie and I spent over 5 hours yesterday morning driving around and tracking the location of her stolen phone. The address we started with produced nothing. The application that I was using - AT&TFamilyMap - was doing a great job identifying the address where it could get a "hit". The problem with the application is that you can only get a reading when the phone is turned on. As a result, we would have to wait between searching each location until we got another reading. We guessed that the individual was constantly moving as we got 4 different readings during the morning, all within about a 5 mile radius. The last reading we got - and the best one - was at a Seven Eleven in Peoria. We arrived there and walked around the store and saw nothing except for a kid that was sitting outside the store, next to a trash can and leaning against the store, with a phone in his hand and listening to something using ear plugs. Josie and I both walked past him. I didn't think the phone was Josie's since the case didn't match hers. Josie walked past him and immediately noticed that the phone was hers with the case removed. She came over to me to tell me it was her phone and the kid ran off. He most likely recognized Josie from the shop and he took off.  We called the police to get some help and waited over an hour for them to show. They arrived after we left as we received a call from them about 15 minutes after we left the area.

Following that experience, we went to the nearest AT&T retail store and had them suspend all service to the phone. We believe that the thief will eventually throw away the phone when it becomes useless to him and we can't wait any longer to have Josie go without a phone. We submitted a claim to the insurance - thank goodness we took out insurance on the phone when we got it a couple months ago - and we expect to have the claim accepted today and a new phone delivered within a couple days. Of course, Josie has to start over again with all her contacts, pictures, passwords and other applications. Some of what she lost will be recovered from the cloud, but we don't know how much at this point.

With the great news of her getting the new job at AJ's Fine Foods and the horrible experience with her phone at the same time, we are both ready to get off of the roller coaster...