Yesterday morning, an hour before the sun rose, my wife was on her way to fly to Los Angeles. We live in a somewhat affluent neighborhood (Grosse Pointe) which is situated next to one of the most depressed parts of Detroit. Right on the border of these two different worlds is a Marathon gas station that we often stop at, and it is here that my wife was robbed. Mack and Alter, for those who know the area.
She drove a small Toyota pickup and noticed a man wearing a hoodie at the pump across from her was staring at her purse. Instinctively, she threw her purse on the passenger seat and locked up the truck. Just as she was putting the hose back in the gas pump, she heard a smash behind her. She swung around to see the man in the hoodie pulling her purse out, dive into his car and squeal out of there. All in the course of about 2 seconds.
One of the many things I love about my wife is her ability to keep her head when all about her are losing theirs. She ran after the car long enough to memorize his plate (turned out, the car had been stolen earlier that morning). Then she ran into the gas station and yelled for a paper and pen to write it down. American Express was great. They told her that within the last 15 minutes, the robber had already made three purchases at as many gas station and she would not be responsible for them.
Let me add at this point, that the guys who run this Marathon station are the nicest you’ll ever meet. Always smiling and considerate. They let my wife borrow their phone for as long as she needed as her iPhone was in her stolen purse.
The next thing she did was brilliant. She made a mental walkthrough of her purse and wallet, visualizing each card, piece of jewelry, everything. Within 30 minutes in a dangerous gas station parking lot at 6AM, she had canceled every card, her travel plans and contacted myself and her parents. The first thing I did was dial 611, which on AT&T will allow you to remotely cancel an iPhone. Since the iPhone was under my account, I was able to do this. Don’t worry—you can’t just randomly cancel someone’s phone as a prank!
Then we contacted Scott (co-creator of Social Threat) as he deals with identity theft a lot. We weren’t sure if this would happen, but never assume. He gave us the link to an identity theft protection service run by Experian. We signed up immediately and feel much better about our safety.
Then I treated my wife to a new iPhone 4.
TIP: If you are robbed, think like my wife:
- Try and get any details you can: license plates, color, make and model of vehicle, physical descriptions of people. Tattoos are great identifiers.
- Shut your eyes and visualize what was stolen. What did it look like when you last had it? What was in it? This will come in handy later for the police report and your insurance company. This may be one of the most important things you can do.
- Cancel cards immediately. Do not wait until you get to safety. They will be putting charges on your cards within minutes if they are pros.
- Always keep paper copies at home of everything: photocopy your cards, your drivers registration, etc. Buy a safe (you can get great fireproof safes at most office supply stores) and keep these copies in there. You’ll thank me later.
Have you been robbed? How did you handle it? Any additional tips?
