Grateful I'm not the Judge

Today I spent most my day here......

I'm sure the first thing my family thinks is, "Oh Great!  What did she do?"  So here it is.....

First of all, NEVER SAY NEVER!  Last weekend when we were in Harbin with our friends, one of the ladies told us how since living in China they had been victims of robbery multiple times.  One night an intruder robbed them while the entire family was in their house sleeping, and two times in a matter of two weeks their newly purchased I-Phones were stollen from out of their hands. Petty thief is common here in China, so everyone listening added their stories of cell phone robberies to the pile.  However, gratefully neither John nor I had one to share......until today, and unfortunately it had added drama.

The crime scene: a high-end shopping mall in the middle of Shanghai (I go here to window shop only, as the prices are clearly out of control, but my favorite hair salon is here, and ironically at "reasonable" prices.)  After being dropped off at one of the entrances, I grabbed my purse, and hurried out of the car to get to my hair appointment on time.  Minutes after I sat down at the salon, I realized my cell phone was not in my purse, and thought I had probably forgot it back in the car, or possibly at the house.  When I got back in the car after my appointment was finished, there was no cell phone in the car, and I also soon realized there was no cell phone at home either. Panicked, I called my cell number--I was surprised when a Chinese man answered my phone!  I told him he was answering my phone, but he would not tell me where it was.  I knew I needed more help, so I handed the phone off to our driver who continued talking to him......Here comes the drama....

The man proceeds to tell the driver that he took the phone from me on my way into the shopping mall.  He recognizes me, and he also recognizes the driver, so if we wanted the phone back we could meet him back at the same shopping mall entrance with a ransom amount.  Only me, only the driver, and the outrageous ransom amount!!!  Our driver told me we were going straight to the police for help.

The next three to four hours I listened through the Mandarin/Shanghainese, and occasional English, as my driver and multiple police officers debated the best way to deal with this situation. In America, I would have just given up by now, and realized I would have to get a new phone.  However,  in China this type of dealing was constant on the streets, and even to some people it was a JOB, ---give the ransom, get the phone back--plain and simple. The ransom was a lot of money, but still  less than a new I-Phone.  Getting the police involved would only complicate matters.

So.....what to do??  Only the obvious...take the strongest man I know with me back to the crime scene for protection---my hubby! A big thanks to the big man for cancelling a couple meetings, and dropping his busy schedule to be with me.  We came up with a plan for safety, that the man would need to agree to meet both John and I to exchange the money/ransom, or nothing at all.  As we pulled up to the "crime scene" to meet I must have told John a dozen times I thought this stuff only happened in the movies, and my heart was beating a million miles an hour.

Two minutes later, an elderly man looking tired and worn, wearing street cleaning work clothes, approached our van and with no expression, slowly handed my hot pink cell phone through the window.  After examining the phone was mine, and still in working condition, I handed him the ransom money with tears in my eyes.  Nothing to do with the money, but the pure fact that how incredibly sad that the difficult situations in this man's life, whatever they might be, had numbed his conscience enough to live a life at this extreme.  My anger that my cell phone was stolen, John's annoyance that his work schedule had been halted, and a fairly large amount of money had been lost was the least of our worries, as we were extremely grateful that we know of the bigger picture. That we definitely all have difficulties in our own lives, but truly will never know what this man has had to face in his lifetime to resort to demanding ransoms from innocent people.  After a few minutes of sitting in silence, and a few more tears, we agreed that we hoped that in some strange way the money could bring him some peace, or maybe someone in his family a bit of happiness, and just were grateful that at the end of the day we're not the judge.