Seattle theft leaves behind neighborly mysteries

A Wallingford man noticed something odd in his corner of Seattle. Peering into an alleyway one afternoon, he noticed another man slowly driving his car, stopping at garbage cans. He left something behind.

The Wallyhood blog reports that the alley was between Keystone and Kirkwood from 54th Street to 52nd Street. It was around 5 p.m. The car reportedly had Oregon plates. The suspicious man was rummaging through garbage cans along the way. The neighbor, identified on the blog as Richard, later took a closer look and discovered the man left behind two bags near one garbage can. The bags contained an empty laptop case; an empty iPad mini case; some drawings; baby toys; a flash drive containing a video about how Old Navy is planning stores in China; and clothes for an adolescent girl.

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One man’s treasure is often a thief’s trash. Just ask Seattle Police Detective Mark Jamieson.

“It is our experience that thieves are going to keep anything they deem valuable and toss everything else,” Jamieson said. “That could be almost anything. Sometimes those items are placed in trash cans.”

That seems to be the case in Wallingford — theft. We know this because the story didn’t end in that alleyway. Among the clothes, Richard found a clue — a receipt for tickets to a performance at the Langston Hughes Center on April 9. The receipt had the purchaser’s email address on it. Soon, Richard was in contact with the owners.

View from the other side of theft

Here’s the other half of the story: A Portland dad, mom and daughter visited Seattle friends with plans to see a show at the Langston Hughes Center. Hours before the show, they all visited Green Lake for a walk. They parked their car near the lake and returned to a smashed window and their possessions missing. Their 11-year-old daughter was crushed — her Pokemon game that she spent two years on was missing. Their bags were gone as well, along with iPads and other valuables.

The theft left the family in no mood for a show that night. They canceled their hotel reservations and immediately drove back to Portland, the blog reports. Thanks to Richard, however, they will soon be getting some of their stuff back in the mail.

A familiar story

The story is not unique to Wallingford. It is familiar to many Seattleites, including myself. A couple months back, I found a metal box on the ground along my street, next to my parked car. The box lay open in the rain, its contents spilled onto the ground beside the road. There were wedding invitations, small boxes of mints with a handsome couple’s photo on them, thank-you cards for wedding gifts, ribbons, and other wedding items.

After a little digging on Facebook, I tracked down the owners: a married couple who lives a couple neighborhoods over. Turns out their home was burglarized earlier that day. It seemed as if the thieves weren’t interested in their wedding mementos, so within hours after the theft, they tossed the box on the ground near my car — most likely while driving by.

Thieves generally do not care about sentimental, emotionally valuable items. It’s more about what they can turn around and easily sell. So it’s simple to tell drivers not to leave items of value in plain sight inside their cars. But what do you tell a family whose home was violated?

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