Playing Detective by Kelley Welch True Story Contest contest entry |
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It was a rare, rainy day in Tucson, Arizona. My husband and I had been on the road for a few years, and were accustomed to living in random places. We’ve stayed in casino parking lots, the middle of the desert, off the side of highways, and on mountain tops. I felt pretty comfortable camping just about anywhere, and this spot was no different. We were one of a dozen campers posted up off one of the popular Arizona highways, about 20 minutes from downtown Tucson. The neighbors were respectful and quiet, and we felt safe knowing there were others around. The fall afternoon brought downpours and heavy winds. The gray clouds hovered the sky like a foreshadow. Our neighbors were all inside, sheltered from the storm. My husband was playing Xbox, and I was reading. The rain muffled the noise outside, and it felt like any other afternoon. That was until I took my dog outside and realized our $1,200 generator was gone. I looked around, ready to ask one of our neighbors if they’d seen anything. I couldn’t believe it, was I going crazy and misplace it? It couldn’t be, the generator was our source of power, our life force. I ran inside to explain the situation to my husband. We were dumbfounded. Did someone really go under our RV and steal our generator in the middle of the day? Luckily, my husband is a genius and hid an apple air tag in the generator. We fired it up to learn the inevitable, our generator was stolen. The hunt was on. We immediately called the cops and explained the situation, but apparently it was a busy day for crime and they could only use their resources sparingly. We had to take matters into our own hands. I put on my best detective face and we got to work, tracking the generator as it moved from location to location. It led us to the first stop- a little Mexican market with a silver car parked outside. We knew our generator was in there, but how did we approach it? We contemplated our next move before realizing the generator was back on the move. This thing was taking a tour of Tucson, and every time we stopped it moved again. The rain picked up, and we felt slightly defeated. I’ll never forget pulling over to a taco truck, standing in the rain, eating carne asada under a streetlight like two detectives working a case. We decided to try one more location, which brought us into an unfamiliar area. It was night at this point, and we didn’t feel comfortable knocking on the door of a criminal, so we headed home to wait until morning. The sun had barely rose by the time we had the police on the line, and they followed us to the location. The police officer knocked on the door, there was no answer. We recognized the sounds of a generator motor in the backyard, and he signaled for us to come to him. There it was, powering a stranger’s house. We wheeled the generator back to our truck, arms pumping like we just won a soccer game. The police officer told us that getting it back was one in a million, that people never got their stolen property back. We defeated the criminals; we won the battle. I learned a valuable lesson that day, apple air tag everything – your tools, your valuables, your wife… tag em all!
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Kelley Welch
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