[sorka]

We went back into IHop on a night that the same waitress had served her was working and tracked her down. I wanted to ask the waitress in person rather than continuing to talk to the same guy who answered each time I'd called and left a message inquiring about the phone.

The waitress recalled finding the phone, a pink Curve, and turning it into the host which so as it turns out was the same and only guy who I'd talked to when calling the IHop.

He denied having been given the phone by the waitress. They basically started calling each other liers and the night manager had to stop. She claimed that she'd given it to him right in front of a specific security camera and all they had to do was check the tape.

We left it at that and left. The night manager, told me to give her a few days to look through the video.

I called several days later and she said there had been a misunderstanding. She said that the waitress had given her the phone, not the host and she'd put it in a drawer and doesn't know what happened to it after that. But there was no reason to check the video since she'd been the the waitress had given the phone to.

It's pretty obvious that the female night manager was trying to take blame off the guy who'd actually stolen it by discrediting the waitress and setting the situation up where anyone could have taken it afterwards from some drawer.

Very frustrating.

In the meantime, I kept an eye out on SMS message delivery. Every few days the phone would go on SMS messages would flood in.

Then yesterday morning I got a call from my wife's phone from some girl who claimed to have bought it off of some gangster for $25. She'd read the messages about my wife's sister going through chemo and needed the phone to coordinate appointments and transportation.

She wanted to arrange to return it.

We met her tonight at a Burger King and got the phone back. Gave her the $25. Tried to give her $50 but she refused which is odd because she really really looked she could use the money. My wife later said she had a really guilty look and suspected that she had been given the phone by the thief and that it was probably someone she knew.


She made no other phone calls on the phone except to my phone. The only call before calling me was 2 phone calls, one to 411 and one to a number that didn't provide any clues.

Phone appears to be in perfect shape. Still has the seideo case on it. Surpised that wasn't ripped off in an attempt to see if this was a sim card phone.

If I had turned it off right after it was stolen, we'd have never gotten it back.