Personal Data Retrieval
Back when I was kid, I had a PDA that could do basic things like act as a calendar and play games; back then, in an ancient bygone era, this was an impressive and novel concept!
Then one day, a substitute teacher took it from me because she thought it looked like a calculator I could use to cheat on a test with. The teacher told me I could get it at the end of the class, but when I went to get it back from her, she couldn’t find it on her desk. I was less than pleased.
That same day, a friend of mine saw a kid known for bullying people and breaking the rules playing with the exact same kind of PDA. We suspected he had stolen mine from the teacher’s desk, but the only way to prove it would be to look at the content of the PDA to see if it had my information on it. We reported this to the teachers, but [Bully] claimed he never had a PDA like [Friend] had seen, and the teachers claimed they couldn’t do anything about the situation without proof [Bully] had my device. I was upset, but [friend] was livid and told me he would fix it.
Near the end of the day, [Friend] handed me back my PDA and told me it had been stolen by [Bully]. I confirmed it had all my information in it, so it definitely was mine.
I should mention that [Friend] and [Bully] had lockers right next to each other. So during the changeover between classes, when we were all at our lockers, [Friend] had waited until [Bully] set his combination lock on top of the locker and then swapped it out with his own. [Bully] proceeded to lock his locker with [Friend]’s lock, and then once [Bully] left [Friend] unlocked the locker, found my stolen PDA inside, then locked both lockers with the correct locks.
[bully] looked completely shocked and confused when he saw me with the PDA the next day. He seemed terrified that my having it meant he was caught and in trouble. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do anything to punish him without admitting to [friend]’s own theft.
My parents also called the school and filed a vocal complaint about the school’s losing an expensive device after wrongfully confiscating it. I got an official apology from the school’s principal, who suggested that since the thief ultimately ‘chose’ to return the stolen device, we should consider things settled now.
