Dan's Papers - December 14, 2007

So here's what Kathy Rae, the Associate Publisher of Dan's Papers, did the other morning. She woke up at her house in Westhampton, collected some blue eggs from one of her six chickens (she and her fiancé John have four guinea hens, three horses and 200 pigeons in addition to the six chickens), put the eggs in a plastic container, got in her car and drove to the Dan's Papers office in Bridgehampton for a 9 a.m. manager's meeting. She intended to hand these unusual eggs out to attendees. It is the holiday season after all.

When she arrived at Dan's Papers, she parked her car by the curb out front, got out, took out her bag and cell phone, and then tried to pick up the eggs. It was too much to deal with. She was afraid she would drop the eggs.

And so, she decided on making two trips. She left her bag in the car to come back for later, grabbed the car keys in her hand and then set the cell phone on the roof of her car temporarily so she could handle the egg container with two hands.

After carefully taking out the eggs, she noticed the meeting in our conference room inside was about to start. And so she decided on one trip instead. She grabbed the handle of her bag with a few of her fingers while still holding the eggs, then kicked the door shut, locked the car with the remote and went inside.

And so she gave away her blue eggs, one to a customer, and then sat down. After a few minutes it occurred to her that she'd left the cell phone on the roof of her car. She hurried outside. But it was gone. She looked in the street. She looked under the car. No cell phone. Some passing motorist must have taken it. So that was that. And so now she went slowly back inside, attended the meeting and tried to forget about her loss.

"It was a cheap cell phone," she later told me. "So that wasn't the point. The point was that I had all my information in it."

As it happens, her son works for Verizon. And so, after the meeting, she called him and he arranged to have the cell phone ID number erased from the system so it couldn't be used anymore. And because she had bought insurance for the phone, she was entitled to a new one. There is a Verizon store in the Bridgehampton Commons. It could be arranged within the hour.

As Kathy thought more about what happened, she began to realize something else. The store next to Dan's Papers to the east is Urban Archeology. They sell expensive home furnishings, including trellises, tiles and statuary, much of which is out of doors, but bolted to the ground so it cannot be easily taken when they are closed.

And didn't they also have a surveillance camera that records a video of the goings-on in front of their property? She called them. Indeed they did. And they'd be happy to let her see what was going on out front between 9 a.m. when she pulled up and 9:30 a.m. when she went back out to the car to see if the phone was there.

The surveillance cameras show a yellow box van heading eastbound and pulling up to the back of the line of cars waiting at the traffic light that apparently is red. The driver inside looks out the window to his right, sees there is a cell phone on the roof of the car, then looks forward to check to see how much time he has, then jumps out of the van - he's wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers - scoops up Kathy's phone in broad daylight, then drives off.

A crime? Petty larceny?

"When I saw this," Kathy said, "even though it was now an hour later, I headed out after him. How many yellow box vans could there be? It didn't have markings on it. But it would have to be in Bridgehampton or East Hampton somewhere."

She drove around for about a half hour, then gave up, and returned to the office.

"He's probably out in Montauk somewhere," she said.

At this point, as Kathy finished telling me this story, I sat down at the computer and with all forty-eight years of my reportorial experience, wrote a story about how we had caught this perp in the act. Here is what I wrote. I am, in retrospect, ashamed of myself that I wrote this, because I jumped to a conclusion, which, as you will soon see, was totally inaccurate.

"So there you are," I wrote. (I would make this my front-page story, under the headline GOTCHA.) "If you know who this perp is, or see his van, or are looking at yourself and your yellow box van right here in this newspaper, I have to tell you a good thing to do would be to put the cell phone in a box and mail it to Kathy Rae, c/o Dan's Papers, 2221 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton, New York 11932.

"There will be no charges pressed, no arrests made. She just wants her information back. If you would do this, we will, in exchange, give you a free copy of the current issue of Dan's Papers, which we will keep out for you in a red metal newspaper box right on our front deck leading under the big neon Dan's sign. Do not fear. The newspaper is right inside. We hope you like the picture in the paper of you this week. Happy days."

This story was actually put into place as the lead story, ready to go to the printer, when just hours before it would be sent, there arrived a new piece of information.

Verizon was reporting that the last phone call made from this telephone before they shut it down was to Kathy's mother's house phone. Kathy had not made this call.

According to Kathy's brother, who took the call, this person on the other end of the line said that they had found this cell phone abandoned by the side of the road in Bridgehampton and wanted to return it to its rightful owner.

A meeting had been set up. In the next day or two the phone would be returned.

I heard in the news that the New York City Police Department had a similar experience in recent days. They set up a sting operation. They would leave a woman's purse on the sidewalk, duck out of sight and watch who took it.

Again and again people took it, opened it up, took out identification and immediately got on their cell phones, trying to figure out how to reach this person. The New York Police Department finally had to abandon this sting after several situations when they tried to arrest public citizens who were in the middle of trying to do just that.

So we apologize for what we almost did here in Bridgehampton. Instead of running this article headlined GOTCHA, we run it a week later - SAMARITAN.