Yesterday
morning my friends, Joe and Kim (not their real names) whose laptop and
external hard disk were stolen last week, announced through Facebook that this
property were returned to them a day ago.
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| CCTV video screen grab of the man who walked away with the laptop bag that was accidentally left at a cafe in Indahpura |
Through a
series of extraordinary circumstances, heartbreak and sheer determination, the
valuable data was retrieved with the help of a network of friends and the power
of social media. It’s a great relieve to
learn of the happy ending to a seemingly tragic loss but for many victims, their
cases often go unsolved even after making police reports.
In a
hurry to leave for their next business appointment, Joe accidentally left the laptop
on the floor next to their table in a café at Indahpura, Kulaijaya. Looking back, they know that it was their
carelessness that gave someone the opportunity to take the bag with the laptop
and hard disk inside.
Once they
realised that the bag was not with them, they returned to that café to retrieve
it but the bag was already gone. The
café manager and staff were unaware but when they viewed the video recorded in
their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), they witnessed how the next customers
at that same table, took the bag along when they left.
The
visuals showed that the young man was smartly dressed and did not look like the
common stereotype of a criminal. This is
very disturbing because it proved how circumstances and opportunity could turn
an ordinary person into a criminal.
Good
family values have taught us that any property that did not belong to us should
not be taken without permission. And if
we happened to discover something that was not ours, in this case – a bag in a
café – ideally it should be taken to the proprietor or café manager and opened
in the presence of witnesses, searched for a name and number to call and inform
the owner that it was found.
In the
event that no contact info was in the bag, the finder could exchange contact
details with the proprietor or manager to keep themselves updated when the
owner of that bag returned to collect it.
When the lost property was reunited with its owner, he would certainly
express his gratitude to both parties – the one who found it and the café too. Through simple acts of kindness and
integrity, a negative situation can be turned into a positive one.
Joe’s
laptop however, was electronically tracked to an IT service centre in Taman
Bukit Indah but even though the proprietor did not have any particulars of the
man who sent it to be reformatted, their CCTV recording provided a clear image
of him. This image, when posted on
social media with an appeal to return the property to the owner, quickly went
viral.
Then Joe
received a call to meet a man at an appointment where the property was safely
returned to him with a request to remove his image from social media, which Joe
did.
The safe
return of my friends’ property reminds us that a mere slip of the mind can
result in dire consequences. Through
this experience, we learnt that two heads are better than one and it’s a good
habit to remind each other about taking all our property whenever we leave any
place.
While the
majority of people have a sense of integrity and still do unconditional acts of
kindness, let’s be aware that there are also opportunists waiting to prey on
our carelessness.
A version of this was published in The Malaysian Insider on 17 June 2015
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