Just Call Me Detective Morrill

As some of you may or may not be aware last Sunday night we had our stroller stolen from our front door! I was pissed! Although we did not discover that it was stolen/missing until Thursday when we were in need of it. We started looking everywhere and quickly realized that in was not in our posession. I then started thinking back to the last time we used it and remembered that on Sunday night Adam was removing our storage box on top of the Volvo so I decided to take the girls for walk. I took Samantha in the stroller, Hannah rode her bike and Tulip & I walked. When we got back we put Hannah's bike in the garage but I pulled the stroller up to the front door so that I could unload Samantha. Obviously we forgot the stroller out there.

Fast forward to Thursday when we can't find it and I realized that someone must have stolen it from our front door. I was so upset and I felt to violated that someone had the guts to walk up to our door...which isn't that easy to get to, and take it. That night I looked on Craigslist and did a search for Graco Strollers. I looked at a lot of Graco stroller being sold but none of them were ours until I ran across a Graco stroller posting that was put up on Craigslist Monday, so the day after our stroller was stolen, and it was posted as being in Davis for $40 and what do you know, it matched our stroller (our stroller is blue and yellow plaid...Aggie colors)! Our stroller is 4 years old and so that pattern is not made anymore. The advertisement said that it was almost brand new, willing to trade for a girl stroller, was expecting a boy. That didn't make too much sense to me, why WERE they expecting a boy and not anymore. And when you looked at the pictures the posted the stroller looked in good condition (we keep our strollers looking good) but the wheels looked really worn, which ours were really worn...I mean we have had it for 4 years! I kept studying the pictures and finally decided to email the person and ask if it was still available.

On Friday morning I posted on "Facebook" that my stroller was stolen and was really upset at what the world was coming to that someone needs to steal a stroller from someones front door. Under the advice of wonderful Tara I filed a police report that my stroller was stolen and that it had some distinguishing marks. I also let them know that I was pretty sure it was on Craigslist and I was waiting to hear back from the person to see if it was still available. While the Specialist that took my report was very nice she said without the serial numbers there was no way to prove it was mine. That sucks! I was not happy b/c of course I did not have serial numbers...all you peeps out there with strollers/trailers or any other kid items or anything that can be stolen, write your serial numbers down b/c I ran into the same problem when my bike trailer was stolen.

So by Friday afternoon I still hadn't heard from the person so I emailed again asking if was still available. That night after the girls were in bed I checked my email and low and behold the girl had emailed me back and yes the stroller was still available!! She wanted me to call her at a number she gave me and told me that if I can't get a hold of her at the number to give her my phone number. I didn't know at that point what I should do and my assistant detective Adam told me to reverse number search the phone number on "Google" to hopefully come up with an address b/c the phone number was clearly a Davis number. So I googled the number and when I saw the address and name that came up I felt my heart jump into my throat and I felt sick...it was my next door neighbor...like right next door!!!!! That house has always been ghetto and the older lady that owns it really has no clue what goes on in her house...plus in the 7 years we have lived here we have barely spoken to her b/c she is kind of reclusive. Her grandson lives with her and he is strange and always brings all sorts of strange people by, girls go in and out of that house a lot and you never really know who is visiting and who lives there. The rest of the neighborhood isn't thrilled with the lady either. I was sure one of those delinquent kids that go in and out of that house had stolen it and she probably had no idea this was even happening under her roof. I was at a complete loss and didn't know how to handle the situation now that I was fairly sure it was my neighbor that had stolen our stroller! I called my friend Denise who is a police officer for advice. She said to email her back, not to call her and find out what her address is to confirm it is my neighbor. She also said once I do that to get the police to do a standby and come with me to mediate the situation b/c they do that all the time.

So this morning I emailed her back and told her what time would work best for me and asked her what worked for her and where did she live? I did this about 9:30am. Bear in mind that all last night I was shaking I was so mad/nervous/shocked that this was happening to us and my stomach was in knots. I could barely sleep. Around 11am this morning I got a call from the Specialist that took my report and she said she found the Craigslist posting I was talking about and was pretty sure it was my stroller too. She asked me if I had contact the person and I told her my whole story about how I had and how I reverse searched her phone number and discovered it was my neighbor! She seemed pretty impressed with all I had done...you don't mess with me! She asked me to forward her the emails I had with the girl and she also looked up the address and came up with the same one. She said she would give the girl and hour and a half to respond back and if she did not then she would come over there and get my stroller back. I was shocked! I couldn't believe the Davis PD was all of a sudden coming through for me! I later found out my wonderful neighbor who is a dispatcher with the Davis PD had called and followed up with them on my case even though she is out of town! She rocks! It truly is all about who you know in this world.

So exactly an hour and a half passed and I get a call back from the Davis PD asking if she had emailed me back. She had not so she told me she and an officer were going to come to the house and get my stroller back. I would have to identify it and they wanted to know if I wanted to press charges. If I did the stroller would be taken as evidence and held until the D.A. figured out if they wanted to try the case. I went back and forth on this but Adam really wanted to press charges b/c he said it was not about the stroller but the fact that these people came onto our property and stole from us and then tried to sell it. Plus this way it would be recorded that something had happened so that if in the future something else happened we would have this to help us.

I saw the specialist and the officer arrive and they walked straight over to house. I was so nervous b/c I had no idea what was going to happen! I was especially nervous b/c I was scared that for some reason it wouldn't be our stroller but I had to keep thinking it had to be b/c there was too many clues that it was. They were over there for over 20 minutes and finally there was a knock on our door! I opened up the door and there was the officer and there was our stroller! She said you recognize this? Of course I did! It totally was our stroller distinguishing marks and everything. She asked if she could come in. She explained that the lady who owned the house of course had no clue this was going on. She had let this 16 year old pregnant girl and her 19 year old husband live with them b/c they were homeless and the girl was pregnant. This couple was brought into the house of course by her grandson...I believe...it even sounded like the officers were confused. Anyway, at first they didn't own up to it but really quickly they told the whole story. The 16 year old pregnant girl wanted to take the fall for it all but it came out that her 19 year old husband was the one who came up to our door and stole it and then she put it on Craigslist. The grandmother who owns the house was mortified and was worried about what her neighbors would think of her...personally I really don't care about her, she needs to know who she is letting stay at her house and what is going on under her roof! The office told me if I pressed charges this 16 year old pregnant girl would be arrested and I didn't want to do that to someone who is already in a bad situation and as the officer said they did confess real quick. I told her my main concern was that I wanted this on record somewhere in case something else happened since this house was so shaddy. They agreed with me that the goings on in that house were weird but told me that this was a case on file with the guilty parties names and everything so it was definitely on record even if I didn't press charges. So I made the call not to send a 16 year old pregnant girl to jail...I was hoping I could only send her 19 year old husband since he was the one that actually stole it but the officer said both would be arrested. Those 2 are lucky I am so nice. The officer gave me her card and said I could call her anytime if I feel there is anything weird going on with the house or anyone it and she would be right over. She gives someones a pass once but definitely not the second time. I felt very comforted by this. The highlight of the whole thing was when the officer told me, "Hey by the way nice detective work on your part". I felt so proud...so that is why you can call me Det. Morrill.

Hopefully they realize they shouldn't mess with me anymore and all will be over. It was also be nice for the lady that owns the house to come over and apologize to me, but I doubt that will happen. So we have our stroller back...and all is well. The whole neighborhood came out for the action that ensued here this afternoon and all are shocked at what happened. But as I said hopefully this won't happen again. Thanks for all the concern by everyone! And of course I couldn't have done all my detective work without all the help I got along the way.