The case of the missing shoes...

This summer I was helping a friend move into her new apartment and as we all took items from the car and walked them up the three flights of stairs to her apartment, I was always conscious that there was someone going down as someone went up. At one point, we were all up in the apartment and I said, "Shouldn't someone be down by the car with all the stuff?" to which I was told, "Sharon, we're in South Florida." Right. This isn't Viet Nam.

While Viet Nam has an extraordinarily low reported violent crimes rate (I won't claim to know the unreported rate), it's petty / property crime rate must be astronomical. You frequently hear stories of bags being stolen off of shoulders by thieves speeding by on motorbike or things disappearing the moment you turn your head. But even with all the stories, it isn't until you experience it yourself that you remember to be diligent about keeping watch over your possessions and sometimes even then diligence fades with time...

One morning last week as I walked Steven out the door as he was leaving for work, I noticed that our shoe rack was askew and there were shoes strewn about in a manner that we wouldn't have done ourselves. I looked at Steven and said something along the lines of "This is strange. Do you think someone stole our shoes?" to which he immediately replied, "Someone stole our shoes!"

After a few harried moments, we ascertained that we were indeed missing a pair of Steven's dress shoes, both of our running shoes, one of Steven's Indian sandals and one brown sneaker of mine. Looking outside our locked gate, I noticed the mates to the sandals and my brown sneakers leaning up against the outside of our house. After another few moments speculation, we realized that whomever had taken our shoes had done so while I was out and Steven had left the gate partially open and that at some point during the night, once they  realized that they only had two lone shoes without mates, they had generously returned our single shoes so that we wouldn't be left with only one shoe and presumably, because one shoe wouldn't bring much profit to them either.

It was distressing for a day or so, but once we replaced our running shoes and got back out on the track, we chalked it up to another lesson learned (never leave the gate unlocked) and were grateful that at least we were robed by a theif with somewhat of a conscience.