And that includes Samsung smart phones

Let discharged dogs lie

So last night. embarking on my "One Week of Walking Everywhere" tour to help our environment (take that, Tom Street), I ventured from my house to the YMCA.  It was around 7:00 p.m., but still very much light, (because we just entered daylight savings time, remember?), when, near Rock Mount cottages on the south side of the road, I came across a Samsung cell phone, and about 5 feet west, the protective phone cover for the same unit.  If I had to guess, from the location, someone left their cell phone on the hood or top of their vehicle, and then, making the turn from a side road, forces of the turn overcame friction, and the phone slid off, causing contents in cover to strike the gravel and chatter for a short distance, ejecting said contents,  This is entirely conjecture, and very much denied by the owner of the telephone, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The phone still had 14% battery charge, and while I'm not familiar with the Samsung product, I've been around enough cell phones to know unless the owner called it, it had a coded entry which I wouldn't be able to crack before it went into long-term or permanent freeze, denying any further entry attempts.  So I put it in my coat pocket, along with the case, and continued walking along Tunnel Road.

At the YMCA, I did a little more inspection, and discovered that (a) tapping the various icons like it was a touch screen had no effect, but (b) once I hit the black button at the bottom, a new screen indicated the contents had been locked, but to call a number if the phone had been found.  So obviously, the owner of the phone had reported it lost/stolen, and was blocking any use (it did seemingly allow me to make emergency calls if necessary, but I didn't try), while still holding out the option of recovery by the finder calling a number.  I wrote down the number with a crayon (the YMCA doesn't provide pens to guests, but they have about 30 boxes of loose crayons out for kids to color with) and Googled it as well, to see if I was calling someone at the ISIS hotline.

Google revealed nothing besides that it was a Denver area code, but as I hit the black button once again (either I wasn't paying attention the first time, or the more you hit the black button, the more rewards you got, similar to a lab rat), it then gave me the option of just calling that number directly from that phone (I recognized the handset icon in the green circle).

So I hit "call", and it took forever for the gentleman to answer.  In fact, I thought I was going to leave a message, because it had rung at least six times.  Finally the guy gets on the phone, and is really skeptical that I have found the phone, he thinks instead that it has been stolen.  When I provide details of where it had been found (the connection is horrible on his end, so I have to keep yelling louder and repeating myself, in retrospect, I wonder if he was talking to other people and attempting to record our conversation), he becomes a little more cooperative, but says he is in Denver and asks if I could drop it off at a location close to the YMCA where he claims he had stayed prior to checking out earlier in the day.

I'm cooperative, but certainly intrigued, that I have found his precious phone, done all that has been instructed, and still have received no thanks, instead been giving essentially "marching orders".  Now the sun has gone down, and I'm walking back in the direction of the proposed "drop zone", but wonder if that cottage cluster will even be open, because it is off-season and why should they be sticking around in their office (this isn't like the Best Western or Ridgeline) on a Sunday after hours.  So I stop at another location, let's call it the Dunraven Inn, and ask if they have the number (or a phone book) for this cluster of cottages, and if I can use their phone to call before I go traipsing out of my way after dark during my "One Week of Walking Everywhere" tour.  I am providing this level of detail so that anyone can verify my whereabouts at particular times.  The person at the Dunraven Inn was definitely a witness, and I made it clear when I departed that she was a witness, because I didn't want to be wandering into an ambush with no one to contact my immediate family.

Well, that phone call went to an answering machine (I left a message, again, more concrete details to my story), which provided an "emergency number" to call in case guests had an emergency, which I dutifully called, but the person who answered that number clearly couldn't be bothered, and suggested I drop the item into an "after hours" key box, which guests who arrived for check in after hours could access to get their room keys.  This was definitely not an acceptable option, which I indicated, since this phone was apparently so damn important and I had been quietly accused in so many words by the owner of stealing it (and not being happy that it was locked, so, what, had a change of heart rather than just chuck it into the Big Thompson).  So I asked the individual what time the establishment would be open the following morning, and made arrangements to return and hand the phone off to a living being.

Walking back through the dark, I suddenly became more and more paranoid, and thought of phone triangulation and phones being used to detonate bombs, and walked way off the road and made sure to track every approaching vehicle.  Suddenly I didn't want that phone anywhere near me, or anywhere near my house overnight.  So I decided to put it in the cluster box the post office uses to deliver mail at the base of my hill, since it would be (a) locked (and thus safe if I was just imagining things) and (b) nowhere near me, and with no way to identify my address.  I put the phone on its side against the north facing wall of my box - it still had charge, and they guy was now sending text messages to it, again with requirements I had to fulfill.  Look, pal, if it is that important, I thought, come up and find your phone.

I slept well, and got up this morning to discover that he (or someone in his "unit") had done just that.  Three of the boxes adjacent to my box (see diagram) had been jimmied or enough of the plastic broken away to enter or look into the boxes (apparently, triangulation is not perfect).  Then the whole group of cluster boxes had been entered by shooting out or drilling out the main lock that opens the main door controlling access to all of them (so that the mail delivery person can more efficiently distribute the mail).  Flashback to Javier Bardem with his gas-powered keyless entry system.  Obviously the phone and the case I had placed in this temporary storage locker was nowhere to be found.  Imagine if, overnight, I had kept that phone anywhere near my person.  At least now the federal government is responsible for clean-up and investigation, not me, or my next of kin.

So those who think weird crap doesn't occur routinely in Estes Park are walking around (or, more precisely, driving around, and way too fast) with blinders on.  My suggestion is, if you see something, say something, and that includes cell phones along the side of the road.  We may be relatively crime free up here in Paradise, but that doesn't mean there aren't rampant X-files actors and activities going on down below.  I still have the phone number written in crayon, but my guess is, it has long since ghosted.