The Great iPhone Heist

Cameron has been begging us for a long time to get her a cell phone. We resisted for a long time, but we finally decided to give her my old iPhone when I upgraded to a new iPhone 3GS. After going back and forth with the cell phone plan person at Best Buy, we finally got it sorted out - she keeps the cheap plan (for the old phone) and I am now paying the 'new' rates. We also added unlimited texting so we wouldn't ever be sorry we didn't. She doesn't use it to talk much at all, and she mainly texts a couple of girls (one from Texas) and Granddaddy.

Anyway, Tuesday of this week - the iPhone went missing at school. They aren't allowed to have their phones visible or audible at school, but they are allowed to have them there. Cameron keeps hers inside her tote bag, in a snap pocket - and she takes the bag with her everywhere she goes. So when it went missing during 3rd period, I knew that someone had to have gone INSIDE her bag and remove it from the small pocket. That was disturbing to me.

Near the end of the day, a young man named R came up to Cameron and told her that he had seen another young man J with her phone. R asked him about it, and J told him that the phone was his. R recognized it as Cameron's - and honestly after she dropped it into the toilet and we had to recover keyboard functionality with alcohol, the screen has definite identifiable characteristics now. So R tells Cameron, and she immediately confronts J. He, of course, claims that he 'found' it and that he intended to return it to her. He gives her the phone back, but the case and earphones (which we had bought on Saturday) are gone.

The phone went missing during 3rd period (during which J sits right by Cameron), J ended up with it, and he made no attempt to return it to her or turn it into the office. I'm glad she got the phone back, but I thought the principal needed to know. On the surface this incident doesn't seem like a big thing, but I wanted J to know that even if you're being stupid and do something serious, people will call you on it.

I contacted the principal yesterday morning. By the end of the day, Cameron had been called into the office. Today I get an email from the principal that J admitted to taking it, he's being punished, and his parents have agreed to replace the earphones. Wow. That's pretty efficient.

I just hope that J learns the lesson that I intended.