Last Monday when i received the call from the police, i was quite surprised that he actually got hold of the surveillance footage from Briscoes. My guess is that the store manager did actually help to retrieve the video clip and passed it to the police. My assumption is based on the fact that i did not file a theft report but a lost property report with the police, and hence technically i had not reported any crime. Even if i did, according to the police officer i talked to on the night of the incident, they would not take any action on it. So the sympathetic look on the store manager's face was genuine; he was really too busy to help me promptly due to Christmas sales and not that he was unwilling to help.
I am not sure whether or not this thief will eventually be apprehended. I hope he/she will be caught so that he/she could learn the lesson and not to do it again. On the night i lost my stuff, what i thought to myself was that probably the thief needed the money and if my money did help him/her to have a better Christmas and New Year, then so be it. I guess this is one of the ways that i made myself feel better - to imagine that my lost actually was a blessing to another. However, that does not mean what this person did was right; stealing (or greed) is wrong no matter what reason it may be.
Now that the items were found, what i could deduct about this thief is that he/she isn't really an extremely bad person. He/She could have just thrown away all my stuff in a dumpster but instead he/she actually left it at another departmental store (and risking being caught on camera again) for other people to find it. He/She took away all the things that involved money (cash and credit cards) but left other stuff intact. He/She didn't return the makeup pouch but did leave this organiser pouch to be found, which probably means that he/she knew how important these identifications are for the person who lost it. So this thief is not that evil after all.
If you think that i am being too naive to think of that thief in such better light, then wait until you know about what happened to the backpacker.
On the same Monday, that backpacker received a call from another police station of another city that is a few hours drive from Wellington. He was told that the driver who drove away with his belongings had been apprehended. The police found a lot of other people's things with that driver too (such as a few other laptops). Over the phone, the backpacker went through the list of his lost stuff and it appeared that all his important stuff was no longer with that driver and might have been discarded.
The backpacker left my apartment on Tuesday and went to stay at his friend's place at another city (which is nearer to the police station that found his stuff). The police returned his stuff to his friend's place, and sadly nothing much were recovered. He didn't get back his passport, identifications, laptop, DSLR camera, backpack, or other more valuable things.
The police told him that these were all they could find that were belong to him. They said his case was actually the lowest in the list against that driver. It turned out that the driver was a "professional criminal" who was on the wanted list, with a long list of offences and crimes. The police had an one-hour car chase on the motorway with him before finally apprehending him. Not only he stole things from other people like what he did to the backpacker, he is also a drug dealer. The backpacker was in fact very fortunate that all he lost were his belonging and not his life.
Anyway, the backpacker had left NZ yesterday and went to Australia to visit his friends. The Malaysia High Comm had issued him with the temporary passport that allowed him to enter Australia and return to Malaysia. He has been worrying about whether or not he would be able to enter Australia smoothly. According to his FB updates, he is in Australia now.
So, it was indeed a lost and found for me but lost and NOT found for him. However, i have had the same thought as what Angel has commented in the previous post - there may be a purpose for me to go to high comm so that i can get to know and help the backpacker in his time of need.
Whether or not his friendship with me would last does not really matter. What matters is that the incidents have helped the two of us to learn and to grow. In that sense, both he and I have lost and found an unforgettable experience, which i'm sure will be a memory to relish ten years down the road.
Labels: life
