FSU Gap Year Blog #4
As my time in Curridabat and San José neared its conclusion, I ran into an unexpected complication. While it’s not super surprising to encounter challenges during a long trip like this, I didn’t expect a complication like this one. I was robbed!
Coming out of a club in San José (my first experience of that kind as well), I was walking down the street with a large group of 7 people (including myself). A group of 3 women, one of them pregnant, came up and asked me questions about some of the people in my group in English. It was a short interaction, lasting only 20 or 30 seconds, but that was enough time for the very short lady who was the one asking questions to bump me and steal my phone without me noticing. As a person, I’m usually very good about making sure I don’t lose or leave anything at places I’ve been. As such, it only took me 20 seconds or so to realize my phone was missing and also connect that the women were most likely the reason for that. The group of 3 split up and I caught both groups separately and questioned them, but to make a long story short, whichever one had my phone was able to get away with it in the end (and since it was in my phone case at the time, my driver’s license as well).
After it was clear that the women were gone and it was unlikely I just misplaced my phone somewhere, I was incredibly angry, not only from losing my primary method of communication, but also 5 years of photos, which I later found were not backed up. I slammed a metal shutter on a closed business with my fist, and the sound echoed down the mostly abandoned street.
While it was very unfortunate that that happened, and I would’ve preferred if it hadn’t, it made some experiences better. It made me be more resourceful in how I communicated (especially when my replacement phone broke….twice) and also let me stay more in the moment when everyone around me was using a phone.
This also led to another new experience, several days later. The director of the program I was in, José, helped me report this incident to the police. It was a lot of waiting around and paperwork, and took multiple days, but I eventually got put in front of a detective. I explained the entire situation in as much detail as I could remember, and I was presented with many pictures of people who might’ve been one of the people who stole it from me. Not far into them, one person immediately stuck out as looking very similar to one of them. I looked at more after that, but that person was definitely the one that looked the most like one of the women. I was not too much later informed that the person I picked out was known for being active in exactly the location I got robbed at, so that made me more confident that my memory wasn’t wrong.
Unfortunately, there’s no satisfying conclusion, as my phone is still missing and I don’t have any information on whether or not they caught the woman, but it still led to lots of new things, so I’m not incredibly upset that it happened (at least, not anymore!).
