Woman Finds Thief’s Phone In Car, Calls His Mother

When a Seattle woman found a cell phone left behind in her car after somebody had broken in, she decided that rather than calling the police first, she would call somebody else.

Eliza Webb came out to her car to find that somebody had broke in. As she looked around and saw that some of her personal belongings had been stolen, she noticed that the thief had left something fairly important behind – their cell phone.

Webb picked up the phone and decided that instead of calling the police, she would call the thief’s mother. After some quick investigating, she was able to find the thief’s mother in his phone, so she called and told the mother that her son may have taken some things from her car.

“I said, ‘This is a very uncomfortable phone call to make. I have your son’s phone and I’m missing some things out of my car and I think they might be two related items,'” Webb told KOMO. “And she [the mother] was devastated.”

Webb works with high school students, so she wanted to find a better way to reach the young man than by having him arrested.

According to the Huffington Post, Webb visited the teen’s house after speaking to his mother and talked to him about what happened. She said that the 19-year-old looked like he had been crying. He admitted that he and a friend had robbed her car and 10 others while they were drunk.

Webb and the teen’s mother decided that the two teens should track down the other victims and go door-to-door to return the stolen items and to apologize to each victim in what they called an “apology tour,” to teach them a valuable lesson.

“I think bringing the police and courts into something like this can have long-term, devastating consequences for kids,” Webb told the Seattle Times, according to the Huffington Post. “I felt that if I could get him to own up to what he’d done and understand there were consequences it could be a much better outcome.”

KOMO spoke to neighbors about the incident and Webb’s plan for the teens to make their mistakes right.

“I was just amazed they were getting this chance to redeem themselves,” neighbor Marcy Budiansky told KOMO.

Webb said that she wanted the teens to understand the consequences of crime and to own up to what they did. 

“Sometimes when you get shamed or told that you did something wrong by somebody else it can stick,” she said.

Webb says that she and the teens have yet to track down all of the victims, so some of the stolen property is still in her possession until the owners can be located.

Sources: Huffington Post, KOMO / Photo Credit: KOMO via Shareably