Ladies, know where your purse is at ALL times and if you have to put it in a safe place while you work, put it under lock and key! On Wednesday, while my boss and I were busy with customers, a "lady" took advantage of the situation and helped herself to my wallet. Mind you, my wallet was in my purse which was IN our back room, IN my locker, which was NOT locked. She managed to sneak back there, get the wallet, HIDE the purse on the OTHER side of the back room (!) and saunter out without either of us noticing her. I had no idea that I'd been victimized until a "police officer" called me at the store and said that he had a young man under arrest for "trying to cash 3 checks at your credit union and claiming to be your son." The red flags were popping in my brain like beans in a microwave. He also gave me "his" name and badge #, told me that there were 3 more officers searching the car in which this young man had been seen, and would I please talk to the teller at the credit union for a moment." The lady told me about "the three checks this young man had tried to cash" and then asked me to stay on the line "because the officer wants to talk to you again." click. Hmmmm. You got it! They hung up. So I called Sac. City PD and found out there was no officer by that name and that their badge numbers don't even go that high. Then I called the credit union's service center. The nice man there called 6 different branches in Sac.; nary a one of which had had any police activity. Also, there had been no electronic notations made on my account by credit union employees. Apparantly this couple thought that if I thought the police were already involved, I would not call my credit union nor stop my credit cards. Boy, were they wrong! there was a theft report filed with the county sheriff right away. The cards were cancelled. My bank account numbers were changed. Today the nice man at the Sheriff's Dept. Service Center gave me a number to call that I want to share with you. I not only got my credit history, I was also able to put a 90 day Fraud Alert on my SSN. There was no charge. The company is Experian. Their phone number is 1-888-397-3742 or you can do this all on line at
www.Experian.com/fraud . There has been no "activity" on any of my cards. I did have to go get a new driver's license today for $20.00 and what is certain to be a horrific photo. oh well. I did not know that my purse had been hidden until one of my co-workers discovered it this morning. So the wallet (new, but cheap) is gone, the pictures of the kids are gone, an assortment of business cards, small change and maybe $15.00 is gone along with the driver's license and the credit cards but there may still be treasures in the purse itself. I didn't go fetch it because I was too busy talking to police, credit card people, the DMV, and warning a lady in PriceLess that she should never leave her purse unattended in the shopping cart. I will fetch the purse tomorrow when I return to the real world. Be careful, not everyone is nice like us!
Mel Brooks must have picked up my life script again because today I got a call from the security dept at the local large mall, stating that they had my wallet! I drove the 7 miles over there in a very skeptic (skeptical?) frame of mind....but there it was! My missing wallet. Containing all my missing credit cards, driver's license, notes, cards, frequent shopper cards, and my LIBRARY CARD! No cash of course but there was less than $20.00 in there when they took it. All the checks are there. Why the thieves scribbled on two of the checks is beyond me. Doesn't matter since that account is closed. Nice to have the check register so that I can see which checks did NOT clear before the acct was closed. I'll have some explaining to do for 6 of them. It could have been much worse. As for the thieves, I hope that their lives/circumstances improve so that they don't have to steal to survive. They can't be all bad; they did make it possible for me to regain my stuff. Perhaps the little silver "lucky frog" that lived in my coin purse will bring them good luck. 
