The Kindness of (Some) Strangers

Yesterday, Sam, Grand-mère, and I went into the city to have lunch with AC. We rode BART as usual, starting out on the Fremont line and then changing at MacArthur to a train heading into the city. We got off at the Embarcadero stop and before we exited, I wanted to see what time it was. I haven’t worn a watch since the battery on mine died at the end of my last semester as a professor in PA, so I felt for my cell phone to check the time.

It wasn’t on me. I was 99.9% sure I had clipped it to my fanny pack before we left the house.

Phooey. (Or imagine something more colorful. I have a very attentive two-year old who repeats everything).

We went on to pick up a take-out lunch and get AC. While we were eating outside in Levi Plaza, AC’s cell phone rang. He answered it, looked confused, and then smiled and said excitedly, “Yes, that’s my wife’s cell phone!”

Yay! Relief! But there’s more to the story. Here’s what happened, according to Alice [not her real name], the good Samaritan:

She and her daughter were sitting behind us on the Fremont train. “Your little girl is so cute!” she said. When we got up to exit the train, my cell phone dropped onto my seat. A man boarded the train, and swooped in on the phone. He took it and moved up to the front end of the car. Alice says that her daughter turned to her and said “Did you see that?” She did. Alice and her daughter followed the guy to his seat, and asked him if he had seen a cell phone back near their old seats. He hemmed and hawed, and then said “Oh, is this your phone?” He was holding my phone. “Yes,” said Alice. He gave it to her and they went back to their seats.

Took some guts, I think, to follow a guy who just pocketed a phone that doesn’t belong to him. Alice said “I don’t think he was going to turn it in.”

Now she has to figure out who I am. She calls her daughter who works for Verizon in SoCal, to see if she can do a reverse look-up from my cell phone number. The daughter says, “Sure, Mom, but I’m not at work today.”

So then Alice says that she decided to call the last number dialed from the phone. She does this and the person who answers gives her the strong impression that he or she is lying to her. “Do you know whose number this is?” she asks. The person responds “Oh yeah, uh huh.” Alice hangs up.

Finally she looks at my contact list, or at the recently dialed calls that have a name attached to them and she calls AC. Voilà. G-mère, Sam, and I were able to meet her at her train station on her commute home. She returned my phone to me, I gave her a bouquet of flowers, we chatted a bit and then said goodbye. She was very nice– a mortgage broker and S.F. native. When I marveled at her guts, following a thief, she said “Oh no, you GOTTA do that. You got to be a blessing to the world.”

It’s nice to know that in this case, for one curse, there was one blessing.

All’s well that ends well, right?

Well, there are still some nagging questions, supplied by my phone’s call log.

1. There’s only one outgoing call from my phone to a number that I do not recognize. Presumably this is a call that the thief made and this would be the first number that Alice called in trying to find me. Problem is, the call was made at 11:43AM. I’m pretty sure that I realized the phone was gone at 11:17 or earlier. Remember I wanted to know what time it was when we got the city? After we realized my phone was gone, G-mere looked at her watch. And according to the train schedule, Alice would have arrived at her destination around 11:35, having already retrieved my phone.

2. There are several missed calls that entire afternoon from another number I do not recognize. That same number sent my phone a text message reading: “Hey did u tell a girl 2 have me call u bout a phone on bart.” The number phoned my phone again last night around 7PM (when I had the phone back). I had a hard time understanding the male caller, but he did ask about “a phone on BART” and I said that it had been returned to its rightful owner. He said something like “Oh, dude called me from a phone that wasn’t his?”

3. There was one voicemail on the phone from a woman who said that the phone belonged to her boyfriend. This was from the same number that someone dialed from my phone at 11:43AM.

So, not only does the timing not match up exactly, it’s unclear to me how the guy in item #2 got my phone number. It does not look like Alice used my phone to make any of her calls. She called AC from her own phone and did not identify my phone by it’s phone number to him.

The only thing I can fathom is that Alice called someone (the woman in item #3?) and left my cell number on voicemail. Perhaps the guy in item #2 is the boyfriend of the woman in #3.

And perhaps we were all on a later train. The only thing that G-mère, AC, and I can agree on is that we left for lunch just after noon. I just have this 11:17 arrival time stuck in my head.

And now I need to let this go. I have the phone back. No harm done. I’ve now added a name in my contact list called “ICE” (in case of emergency). All’s well that ends well.

But if you have any insights into these minor mysteries, please let me know!