I went to a meeting Tuesday night at the stake center. There were two meetings that evening. My meeting started at 5:30 and the second meeting started at 6:30. The stake center is in San Jose (the big city) and just like most buildings in the big city, it has fences with barbed wire all around it.
Anyway, we (the branch president and I) arrived and parked inside the stake parking lot (behind the barbed wire) and went to the meeting. When the meeting was over I went out to my car, opened the door and sat down. It was dark, so it took me a minute to realize something was not right. However, I eventually noticed that the dash board where the radio used to be was pulled off and laying on the floor. There was also evidence that the thief had rummaged through the center console and gone through the drawer under the seat.
I then (in true crime scene fashion) exited the car trying not to touch anything and went to the other meeting that was still going on to ask for help. A brother who spoke English came out and explained the situation to me. He said that I could go down to the police station and fill out a report. Naturally I asked “aren’t the police going to come out and dust for prints.” He merely smiled at my gringo naiveté and said “no.” I then asked what good it would do to go down and fill out a report. He admitted that the chances of recovering the radio were slim. I decided to not make a bad evening even worse by wasting my time filling out useless police reports.
After further investigation we determined that the gate to the parking lot was left open to allow members to enter while the meetings were going on. It turns out that the thief simply drove in and parked his car next to mine. When a bishop arrived for the second meeting he noticed that someone was sitting in a red car. When he approached, the driver quickly started the car and drove away. Two other cars were broken into as well, including the car of the stake president.