So, He of the Sea had his stuff stolen at the gym recently. It was kind of funny when he called to say that someone had stolen his pants, then the reality set it. Carefully stored in the pockets were his phone (brand new), his keys (two houses, one post office box, two cars) and his wallet (one military ID [including social security number, of course], one driver's license, two credit cards, and various other paraphernalia).
The good news is, they didn't take the car. It would have been easy enough...there weren't that many Ford cars in the parking lot that night. That would have been a tragic loss, as he had put his wedding ring away in the car before he went to work out. Plus the inconvenience, and expense, of replacing a perfectly good, and paid for, car.
He spent the evening filing police reports (one civilian, one military), calling banks and ordering a new driver's license. We read up on credit alert vs. credit freeze and debated the relative merits of each.
While we can't prevent this kind of thing from ever happening, there are a few things that have made it easier, and a few things I'll change in case it happens again.
First, I'm thankful that he doesn't carry a wallet full of cards. Just two IDs and two credit cards, one personal and one government. And none of them have our home address on them, so those keys aren't very useful for gaining access to our house. I suppose the thief could look up our address on the internet, then bluff his way onto the base, but I'm trying not to worry about that.
Second, we have separate credit card accounts. Therefore, I didn't have to close my accounts when his card was stolen. Also, this made it a lot easier to order a replacement driver's license, as we needed a credit card to do that.
Third, I'm thankful that he has two passports because I was very concerned when I saw the list of documents that he would need to replace his CAC card. He was required to present two documents from a list of about twenty. Of the twenty on the list, most of them were things that he wouldn't have (such as a Certificate of Naturalization or a Canadian Driver's License), and two of which had just been stolen. I was scrambling through our documents, searching for his voter's registration card, when he reminded me that he had both a tourist and government passport. Hurrah!
Fourth, I'm glad that his car remote had come off of his key chain. Hypothetically, with the remote, the thief could have just walked around the lot pressing the panic button until he found our car. Also, those darn remotes are expensive!
This event has also reminded me of a few precautions we hadn't taken, like keeping valuables out of car, keeping handy copies of important telephone numbers (to cancel the credit cards), and recently checking our credit reports. Thanks to the military identification system (which is changing, see Love My Tanker's post here), my husband's social security number and home of record address are now in the hands of someone who has demonstrated that they aren't trustworthy. We'll be keeping an eye on that for a while in the future, I can assure you. Plus, I'm going to locate those voter's registration cards.
