Cell phone friend, Karen

This story starts about 4 months ago.. In October… Our daughter, Julia, was involved with the Kingston High School marching band. She was part of a small group of people that were in charge of moving the SET PROPS around the field during each marching band competition and performance. (For those of you not familiar with Kingston High School marching band…They are good. They travel all over the state to compete… and often win the competitions. )

Kingston High School hosts a competition of their own in Kingston..  It’s called “Fall Fan Fare”. Held at a local stadium (Deitz Memorial Stadium) and school marching bands from all over the state show up to compete. It also brings all the family members to spectate. So, the place was packed!! People sitting .. people standing… everywhere…

My mother-in- law…. and myself… and William ….went to see the performance. It was a beautiful, perfect fall day. We enjoyed the show/competition and then we went home.

When I walked in my door at home, my phone rang. It was my mother in law. She told me that she was carrying a tote bag at the stadium for the performance and it didn’t have a zipper closure on top…  wide open on the top… Turns out, when she got home and cleaned out the tote, there was a cell phone inside the bag. It was not hers. The phone must have fallen off the bleachers into her tote.

She called me right away because she figured she could give it to me and have Julia give it to the people in charge of band and can find the rightful owner. At this point, however,  I figured all the visiting cars / busses were rolling out of town back to their homes.

I drove over to  my mother-in-laws house to get the phone from her. We tried very quickly to see if there was a contact name in their for someone like:…. MOM, DAD, HOME or GRANDMA… There were none of those names listed !!!

Beyond that, I didn’t have time to play around with the phone. Also, it was a bit tricky for me. It was NOT an Iphone. I am only really familiar with iphones. When I eventually went back home, I just put the phone on my kitchen counter…until later when the kids could help me.

Later that night, everyone in the family was home. I glanced over and saw that phone on the counter… I had totally forgotten about it!!!!….And forgot to tell Julia about it earlier in the day.

JULIA is our cell phone expert. The girl is always on her phone. She knows phone tricks like no other…So, I handed her the phone and challenged her to find the owner.

Remember,… that stadium was PACKED with people…People from all over the state… It could belong to ANYONE.

The first step toward solving this .. Was..that we realized from the area code (315) that its owner probably lives in the Syracuse area. We also saw a few  texts filled with random innocent stuff and it became very  obvious that it was a teenager’s phone. Julia felt so guilty reading a few messages (because she is sweet like that) but had no choice so she could help figure out the MYSTERY.

Then, the biggest discovery of all..

Julia then mentioned that many of her OWN friend’s parents make them put parent “contact” info in the phone starting with the letter A  so that it’s the very first contact on the list.

Sure enough,  .., she looks in the contacts …and, ba-da-bing , there is “AAA Karen” and “AAA Jim”…  Julia said “I bet that’s the Mom and Dad, right there”.. It took her all of 10 seconds to figure that out.

It was about 8:30 at night at this point. I decided to use the found phone and dial the” AAA Karen” that was in the contacts. I heard a very happy voice answer her phone…. She obviously recognized the incoming phone number and was quite excited.

“Yes, that’s my daughter’s phone. We stayed around for an hour after the competition checking all the bleachers. We thought we would never find the phone, We live in Syracuse,…Thank you,… etc. etc..”

So, what happened was…. I wrote down Karen’s cell phone number and her address …The next day I packaged up the phone and mailed it out to Syracuse….. I proceeded to send Karen a text message saying the phone will arrive at her home on Wednesday…

Karen was so happy and appreciative.  She texted me the day that the phone arrived at her house to let me know it arrived and to thank me, again.

A few weeks after that, I received a letter in the mail.  Karen had sent me a visa gift card with a beautiful thank you note.

I get the impression that Karen is a busy person. We still text every few weeks to check in and say hello. Christmas Day I got a “Merry Christmas” text. I sent her a Hack family Christmas card and she sent one back to us. Hers was so cute. She sent her family holiday photo card and drew arrows on it with a pen… Arrows pointing to what kid is who.. She wrote “This is the girl that’s in marching band, and this is the girl who the phone belongs to”..

When I decided to write this story on my blog, it reminded me that we haven’t texted since Christmas. So, I just sent her one to check on her… Maybe I’ll tell her to follow my blog so she can read this story…Or maybe not.. That might look creepy.

Funny how you meet new friends.

When I entered her  info into my phone, I put her in my contacts as “CELL PHONE FRIEND, KAREN”