Took the family to the beach today, July 7th 2009. We get there and I let them out near the beach walk because the nearest parking was a far walk in the hot sun. After I drop them I proceed to park in a spot where a car that just pulled in had taken up too much space, leaving me with very little room on both sides. As I squeeze out of my door I'm grumbling about what an idiot the guy was and I see a guy walk over to a blue minivan on the right side of my Explorer. The guy is snickering about something and I think he's laughing about me grumbling.
This ticks me off for a sec, but I don't say anything, as I'm trying to hurry to the beach. So I get whatever I'm supposed to carry, lock the doors and walk to the beach. I get to our spot on the beach and suddenly hear my car alarm blaring. I plant the umbrella and run off to check and see what's going on. As I run to the truck I see the guy that was getting into the minivan nervously approaching the beach, but pay him no never mind.
I get to my truck and see the door is ajar and say to myself, I know I closed that door. At this moment the guy from the minivan approaches me, asking if that's my truck, when he very well knows that it is, because he saw me getting out of it a few minutes earlier. He says that he saw some kid near my truck, to which I say, okay, locking my truck again and heading back to the beach. He gets into his minivan and leaves.
At this point it dawns on me that he was the only one in the parking area when I originally headed to the beach. I also thought back and realized that the reason he was nervously mumbling to himself earlier is because he was the one that tried to get into my Explorer but was scared away by the alarm. At this point I call 911 and let them know what occurred. 2 Deputies are dispatched to the beach. I give them a description of the guy and the minivan and one of the Deputies goes off in search. As I'm filling out the report with another Deputy the first one calls back that she sees a similar van at the next beach south.
The Deputy I'm with takes my info and my (wife's cell phone number) and runs to see if they can catch someone. A short time later (my wife's cell phone) rings and it's the Deputy asking me to drive down to the next beach to see if I can identify the van. I drive down to that beach, leaving my family to enjoy a perfect beach day. I pull up to the beach and there are now 3 deputy cars parked there. I get out and tell them that the van looks to be a later model than the one I saw, but am not positive.
I walk onto the beach to see if I see the guy. The Deputies start looking around and flush a couple of guys out from behind some reef rocks. I point to one that looks like the guy. The Deputies bring him back to the blue van for questioning and he says that his license is bad, that his friend drove him to the beach in HIS minivan. His story starts to unravel when his friends are made aware of what he's being suspected of doing. Eventually his friend fess's up, his story folds and they arrest him on the spot. Now mind you, we had nothing of value in my Explorer. The point of me calling the Police was to prevent this guy from breaking into more cars.
Turns out that when the first Deputies went in search of him, they, there were two, spotted him looking into cars at the other beach, but when they turned around, he was gone. So 2 hours after I arrived at the beach, I was finally able to go and enjoy family beach time.
Why doesn't that shock me? Who knows, one of those guys might've tried to hold up a UPS driver a year from now. Management doesn't look at it that way though. They were probably more pissed about you working a little OT that'll come off their bonus checks. 
