A Car Break-In and the Power of an iPad App

• March 30th 2012

by Shilpi Paul

In a slight departure from all things residential real estate, I wanted to share a story about gardening, Truxton Circle, a car-break-in and an iPad app that can make us all feel like James Bond.

On Wednesday, my fiance’s mom came to our house in Truxton Circle (the tiny neighborhood squeezed between Shaw and Bloomingdale) from her home in Pennsylvania to give us a gift: a garden. Our front yard had been long neglected and was basically a bed of dry dirt.

She drove up at around 10am, unloaded plants and got to digging. Her car was parked around the corner, in a well-traveled alley just off of 4th Street NW. She had a meeting in the afternoon and hoped to finish the job within a few hours, so she didn’t bring too many things into the house.

In the middle of toiling in our teeny front yard, she heard a car alarm go off. She took a short jog to the car. After walking halfway around the car and taking a quick glance, she didn’t see anything suspicious and headed back to resume gardening, turning off the alarm.

I got home at about 2pm around the time that she was finishing up. Pleased that she still had time to make the meeting, she went out to the car to get her bag and get ready.

Here’s where the day took a turn. The car alarm had been correct — the back passenger window was completely busted and a bag containing an iPad, clothes and important tax papers had been stolen. The thief must have acted quickly, perhaps after she turned off the alarm.

As you can imagine, our happy moods were shattered. We called around in a vain attempt to gain control of the situation, first to the police and then to several glass repair outfits. Dejected, my future mother-in-law canceled the meeting and went home to Pennsylvania, very worried about the papers and sad about her stolen belongings.

However, once at home, she remembered that a tracking application had been installed on her iPad: Find my iPhone.

(Cue the Mission Impossible theme song.)

She logged on, found the location of the iPad, called the police and then things got exciting. She was able to direct the authorities to the exact location of the iPad, which had traveled a couple miles east to Brookland, and was sitting in someone’s house.

With her on the line, the police headed toward the location. They identified the house and she gave them more information: from the application, it looked as though the iPad was in the back of the house. When the police got inside, my fiance’s mom cued the application to make the iPad play a sound. Sure enough, a sound came out of a bag — her bag, still full of all her belongings — in a back room. With solid proof, the cops apprehended the culprits and recovered the bag. We’ll be able to get it all back on Monday.

Needless to say, soon after this incident, I installed the Find my iPhone app on my iPad. Then I went out to water my new garden…and check on my car.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_car_break_in_and_the_power_of_an_ipad_app/5356.