What the...?

So...the strangest thing that's ever happened to me happened this past week.  It's just too crazy of a story not to share!  It's kind of long and complicated, so bear with me.

As many of you know, we're finishing our basement.  The time came to pick someone to paint it, and we discovered it was a fortune!  So we did a little shopping around, and found a guy on KSL that was a really good deal, had a great portfolio, and said he was a returned missionary just trying to get his business going.  So we hired him to do the job-for the sake of the story we'll call him Taquito.

So Thursday Taquito and his partner showed up to get started.  Brady helped them most of the time, and spent about 3 hours with them swapping mission stories and what not.  Thursday night (actually, Friday morning at 3AM) Brady came into our room asking me where our laptop was.  I was delirious & told him we'd look for it the next day.  Well, Friday came and went, and still no laptop.  By Saturday, I knew it had to have been stolen, and I suspected the Peruvian painter, but Brady thought I was crazy.  He couldn't believe it could be stolen, and if on the off chance it was, there was no way it could be the missionary painter.  He thought if it was anyone it was the sheet rockers (yeah...clearly we hire high quality people!).  So he called them, and they came over with all of their references and everything, swearing they didn't do it.  Meanwhile, I went and peeked in the painter's van.  I didn't see our laptop, but I did see an ipod and some Mac cords, so I knew he was a "Mac guy".  I marched downstairs and asked him if he'd seen Brady bring it down there.  He acted totally confused, and like he'd never heard of "Apple" or "Mac" in his life.  Right away, I became even more suspicious, but Brady still thought I was crazy.  We spent the rest of the night chatting it up with the guy, buying him dinner, etc.  He finished most of the job, so we paid him (cash...we're idiots).  However, he was due back Monday to paint our bathroom and do some other finish work, and we were going to pay him the rest of the money.

Sunday morning at the crack of dawn, Brady and I hear our dogs barking and going crazy.  We thought that was really weird, since they never do that, but we figured maybe a deer was in our yard (it's been known to happen!).  Also, we have an alarm that talks, and Brady heard it say "Basement door-open", but he checked it, it was locked, so we figured the wind rattled the door or something.  Anyway, after waking up on Sunday, Brady goes outside to find our gate closed tight, but Daisy is in the front yard.  He also notices our Harley trailer is open-luckily the Harley was in the garage and there was nothing in the trailer.  So Brady goes over to our neighbor, and he said he'd seen someone super early in the morning peeking over our fence and go back in our yard.  We've had so many workers coming and going, that he didn't think much of it.  (At like 5am on Sunday morning?  Umm...)

So, Monday morning Brady goes to file a police report for the laptop & the creeper trying to break into our house.  Shockingly enough, Taquito also doesn't show up for work that day, and he won't return any of Brady's calls.  The writing was on the wall at this point, and we figured our laptop was gone forever.

On Tuesday about five minutes before I was leaving work to go to Madi's wedding dinner, I decided to check KSL just to see if any laptops looked like mine.  Sure enough...I found one in Sandy that had all sorts of pictures including this one:

 








There, right in front of me, was MY computer's serial number!  I just about dropped to the floor!  So Brady called the police, and to make an already long story somewhat shorter, Taquito had sold it to a guy, who then sold it to a used Mac store.  The police verified the computer, and went and picked it up.  They also arrested Taquito yesterday.  He's done this twice before-stole $50,000 worth of merchandise from another family-but this time they can prove it!  We're pretty sure he would've done that to us, because we think he had to be our Sunday morning creeper trying to break in, but the alarm probably scared him off.  Brady is going to identify him in a line-up today, and he'll be going away!  We should get our laptop back today or tomorrow.  It's been wiped clean of all our stuff, but at least we get it back!  We're also going to try and get back the money we paid him for the unfinished paint job, although I doubt that will happen.

Can you believe that?!  It's seriously so sad that you just can't trust anyone anymore!  This is the first time I've ever been robbed, and while it was only a laptop, it's amazing how unsafe and violated it can make you feel.  I'm just glad the guy has been caught to he can no longer scam anyone else!  Moral of the story:  Don't hire a returned missionary, cash only, painter off KSL unless you know him!  Sometimes going the cheaper route is just not worth it!