Day 12 - getting our lives backtogether

After tossing and turning most of the night we loaded the car and luckily Andrew checked our online banking accounts. Come to find out the people who broke in had also stolen two credit cards that we'd never used and were spending money at a number of places around the city. When we got back to the car Andrew was especially aggravated to know that they had taken his folder of "work in progress" and that his 'to do' list and other lists he lives by were inside.

Next, we drove back into San Francisco to have the glass replaced in the car. [The guys at the glass shop told us the theft was called the "San Francisco Welcome"…we told them we didn't treat visitors to our state like that, we welcomed them with sweet tea instead.]

We set out on foot to file the fraud paperwork in person at the police station as we were told to [but the auto part had previously been done over the phone… go figure] and then to the Apple store to get the new computer purchase taken care of. It was so sad to be in such a fun place getting a new computer and not enjoying the experience.

After we got back to the car we did some drive by sight seeing for the next couple hours, but were afraid to leave the car with the new computer and other valuables inside. It has occurred to us through this experience how "unjust" the system really is. The 'victims' are not compensated for the things that are not "of value," which are the things that are most important. The offender [if ever caught….which is basically a 1 in 100,000 chance] is only accountable to the state of California, not to us in any way. The only way we even come close to financially being compensated for our loss is through insurance, which WE pay for and also have to pay the deductibles on. It is extremely ironic that we were in the Oakland area so that Kim could do restorative justice interviews with some folks who specialize in that and through this situation she wasn't able to do that, but experienced a lack of retributive justice instead. [Additionally, she can imagine how well it would go over if back home someone called 911 to report a vehicular break-in and no officer actually came out to the scene that they told you your two options were to file the report with the dispatcher over the phone or to make the police report yourself online. Yeah, people would pretty much flip out.]

After a number of other stops to pick up other missing items to try and get the experience over with as soon as possible we drove as long as we could toward the Hearst Castle for our second trip to re-take some photos of the amazing place.