Moving Out, Moving In, Moving On

When my son-in-law was transferred from Reno to San Francisco, he moved his family to Tracy and their house in Sparks went into short-sale. They decided to rent in Tracy to see if they liked it well enough to buy a place, and discovered they didn't/don't. Shortly after settling into their rental, they discovered their landlord was cashing their rent checks but not making his house payments. The house was going into foreclosure. They used this as an opportunity to find a new place in a better school district, and called a moving company.

On the scheduled day, Darin left for work as always and our pregnant Jenn began to deal with the movers. Or at least the foreman, since apparently no one else on the crew spoke English. A few hours into the hustle and bustle, my phone rang. My daughter, in tears, said, "I need you to make me feel better." My whole system came alive!

One of the movers stole her I-Pod off the kitchen counter, she told me. Oh, I told her, that's hard to believe. Maybe she stuck it in a box without thinking about it, I suggested, trying to reassure her. No, she insisted, it had been on the counter earlier and now it was gone. She talked to the foreman and he asked his four workers about it (in their apparent language) and informed her no one knew anything about it. "All you can do is file a claim," he told my tearful daughter.

Later she discovered her husband's I-Pod and a hundred dollars in cash was missing from her purse, which had also been on the counter. She called the office number for the moving company to complain and the uhhh... lady... that answered said, "Why'd you leave your stuff on the counter?!"

I tried to console my daughter by saying, "The I-Pods are just stuff. Stuff's not important. And the hundred dollars? At least it was only a hundred and not a thousand." I feel bad. I failed in my objective to try to make my daughter feel better. It was so much easier when she was little and a kiss on the knee did the trick if life treated her badly enough to give her a scratch.

We all know the claim against the moving company will go nowhere. Yes, the company is bonded. But bonding companies are not in business to compensate customers for thievery. They are in business to collect fees from companies that need to be bonded. The police have a report on file, and no doubt other complaints have been made concerning the same movers, but so what? I've suggested to my kids that they wait a bit until they are certain no one is going to do anything about this, and then contact KCRA Call to Action to see if they'll investigate and report on the situation. My son-in-law is concerned that if they pursue the matter, since the non-English-speaking crew that may or may not be legal knows where they have moved to, one or more of them may show up to create more of a problem. I have no idea how to respond to that perception.

It's a shame. Fact is, if the moving crew had been made up of all blue-eyed blonds speaking impeccable English, the same misfortune may have occurred. But something like this can lump individuals into groups and feed stereotypical thinking. Look at what's happening in Arizona. A few bad apples, and it's easier to dump the whole barrell than to try to save the good ones.

Makes me long for the "good old days" when we all felt safer and more comfortable trusting each other. And fall back on the cliche... learn from it and move on.