Hunting my stolen backpack in Santiago Chile
The Frequent Miler team is currently on the second half of our Party of 5 challenge. Last week, team Tokyo (Carrie and Stephen) took us from Tokyo to the Philippines to Macau and back to Tokyo. This week, so far, team SFO (Tim and Nick) took us around San Francisco and then to Santiago Chile […] The Frequent Miler team is currently in Buenos Aires Argentina to try and recover their stolen backpack from the trunk of an Uber. The backpack contained various valuables, including credit cards, passports, vaccination cards, and a number of credit cards. The team was advised to file a police report if they found the bag, but they were unable to find it. After five hours of searching, the bag was finally located and the team was reunited with the stolen items.
Opublikowany : 2 lata temu za pomocą Greg The Frequent Miler w General
The Frequent Miler team is currently on the second half of our Party of 5 challenge. Last week, team Tokyo (Carrie and Stephen) took us from Tokyo to the Philippines to Macau and back to Tokyo. This week, so far, team SFO (Tim and Nick) took us around San Francisco and then to Santiago Chile and then to Buenos Aires Argentina. When we arrived in Santiago on Saturday morning, we loaded into an Uber and someone somehow stole my backpack out of the trunk. We discovered it missing when we arrived at the Ritz.
My travel wallet was among many other valuables in my backpack. The travel wallet held various IDs (but luckily my passport was in my pocket at the time), vaccination cards (yellow fever, Covid), and a number of credit cards. Minutes after we discovered my backpack missing I started getting messages from credit card issuers: fraud alerts about attempts to use my cards for $2500+ purchases. Yikes.
At first I thought there was no way to find my backpack but then I remembered that my Apple AirPods were in one of the pockets. Through my iPhone I could see where they were, and the location seemed to update every twenty minutes or so.
I talked to the hotel concierge about tracking the bag. He said that the bag (or at least the AirPods) was in a very bad part of town and so we shouldn’t go ourselves. What about the police? He said we could try but didn’t think they would help. He then called a friend at a police station and was told that if we filed a police report, the police may be able to take us to where the bag was to try to recover it.
Fortunately for us, the Ritz’s driver was available and he spoke fluent English. He took us to the closest police station where, with his considerable help (since no one at any police station we visited seemed to speak English), I filed the police report. That was slowwwwww. When it was finally done, we were told to go to the police station in the precinct where my backpack was because police from other precincts couldn’t go there.
At the next station, we were told to wait until one of the two available police cars was available. We waited and waited and waited. Fortunately a police officer was able to lend me his charger while we were there because we wouldn’t be able to track the bag if my phone, which by then had 18% charge, was to run out of batteries altogether. By the time a car was available, my phone was charged to 72%. That was the good news. The bad news was that the bag had moved by then to a different precinct. We had to move on to another station and start the waiting process all over again.
We bounced around from one station to another as the backpack traveled all over the city. I assume that the thief was trying different credit cards in different stores. Or maybe they were selling the backpack’s contents. Or both.
After about five hours of this grueling slow motion wack a mole game, we finally got some help. Nick and I loaded into the back of a police car to go to the last known location of the bag. Shortly after we arrived, though, the bag (or at least the AirPods) had moved again. They were now back in the original location, or close to it, and in one of the worst parts of town. This is when we finally gave up. At the pace we were moving there was no way we’d ever catch the thief or recover any of my stuff. I had to concede that the game was over. I lost.
This is a huge bummer for me. I lost a ton of valuable things including my laptop (I’m blogging from my cellphone for the first time ever). Of the things lost, I’m saddest about the backpack itself. It’s been fantastic and yet they don’t make this exact one anymore. Fortunately it is all just “stuff”. Everyone on the team is safe and healthy, and that’s what really matters.
We’re now in Buenos Aires and about to do some mystery activity that requires clothes that we don’t mind ruining. Hmm. Paintball perhaps? Follow frequent_miler on Instagram to find out!
Tematy: Crime