In my local newspaper there was an article where a victim of crime had their $25k necklace stolen from them.
After reading the article, I fully believe I know this event could have been prevented.
So I’m going to offer a few bits of advice on this particular scenario that would have prevented this entire debacle, here in Palo Alto, CA.
- My first bit of sage advice: Don’t wear jewelry that’s valued at that amount.
- My second bit of safe advice: See item #1. But if you must wear such incredibly wonderful trinkets, I’d also suggest not walking around town at 1:30 a.m. in the morning.
Yea… that’s not a typo. Unless the paper messed it up, the vic was out at 1:30 in the morning when the perp, who apparently either has a keen eye to value, or was just lucky, saw our hapless vic and took advantage.
To some degree, it feels like a perfect case of opportunity combined with Darwinism! Does this qualify for a Darwin Award? Nah, no one was removed from the gene pool!
That, is my sage advice for Thursday, November 5th, 2009.
(SoB Disclaimer: I’m no recognized expert on the matter and my perspective / suggestion could be wrong!)
PS: This reminded me of a time. Some years ago an affluent friend of mine and his “bank account draining*” fiance gathered a few friends and treated us to Disneyland.
*That was his term for her after the relationship fizzled.
We went on all the rides and had a blast… up until Space Mountain that is.
As we got off, I heard her say “Sh**, I lost my Rolex!”
He replied calmly, “That sucks, but don’t worry, we’ll get you another replica.”
(Apparently expensive watches can come in sets where a very inexpensive replica is included for outings such as this. The “cheap” replicas only cost a few hundred bucks apparently.)
She then replied, “I didn’t wear the copy today.”
At this point, there were a few colorful metaphors coming from my friend, some of which were reminding his beautiful fiance why there are replicas in the set, etc., etc… [edited for content] etc..
I have a miserable sense of humor and I wasn’t helping because I started laughing… but that’s another story.
They got the ride shut down and a hunt was ensued!
We never found the watch and went about our day. I always wondered if anyone who worked there ever did though?
Of course, I know that you are betting you know exactly what advice I might dispense to prevent such calamities… so we don’t need to go into that! Do we?
(I wonder if he’ll ever see this article? Nah, he’s probably too broke now to even afford free internet!)
