<p>He left all his valuables some place, locked room or not, for five minutes. Some or none or all of that may be true, and yet you blame yourself?</p>
<p>Man does he have you taking all the responsibility for his actions. Does he take no responsibility? I can bet you that he didn’t tell you everything.</p>
<p>If I were you I would ask this question of the Houston PD. If the laptop is in a pawn shop I would think that they would be the ones to check this database. I cannot answer for sure. Call them. The longer you wait the less likely it will be recovered, IMO. Again check Craigslist. And please, no need for the self deprecating comments about being a failure as a parent.</p>
<p>To zoosermom. My son already posted the message of his stolen items on the Lost and Found. He also sent out messages to ask his fellow students to keep an eye for his stolen items. He even tried to look for his stolen items in the dumpster. I have posted the stolen laptop in every stolen property database and lost and found database that I can find.</p>
<p>Your son got his stuff stolen, so he says, so you say. The campus police and the head of the facility here have said that there is not enough proof or info to accuse anyone. No different than many cases of kids or adults, for that matter losing something or having it stolen. You are out of luck when it happens. Bad luck, it is, and so your make your reports and move on. End of the matter. If you are lucky, perhaps some of the pieces will show up, but I would not count on it. Tell your son to ask the campus police if the report goes into the info of the city/local police because he wants any chance of recovery and for the computer number to be on file with them. Unless there is an auto link, he should file that report too.</p>
<p>I’m sorry he lost all of those things. Now he knows he can’t put anything down there. I reiterate that he should look for another work/research place. And he has to move on. My son’s computer blew up his last weeks of college when he had his senior projects do which seriously compromised him. Didn’t tell us. We would have replaced it, but didn’t know so he had to do all of his work on the school computers. At a school like RIce, the facilities available to do this are incomparable, so an immediate replacement is not necessary. Just more of a pain in the backside for him. Luckily new computers are not that expensive. I got one for my son when came home and it was under $400 and I probably could have gone a hundred less. BOth he and you have to slab some money away to get another computer if that is a priority item. As said before, he is in a place where it is not as necesssary to have one. </p>
<p>Forget the custodian or any proof. Your story is second hand and it’s all a moot point anyways. The stuff is gone and he has to move forward if he is going to get through the term successfully.</p>
<p>look for stuff like this [3D</a> Toshiba Satellite laptop](<a href=“http://houston.craigslist.org/sys/3282448896.html]3D”>http://houston.craigslist.org/sys/3282448896.html)</p>
<p>It sounds like the OP is actually the son who is posting as the parent. It’s very unlikely that a parent would suddenly join CC just to post about the theft of a kid’s computer and to have so many details of the incident. Most of us have been around CC long enough to tell the difference.</p>
<p>If RUPD has closed the case, it’s likely that they had good reason.</p>
<p>To Seahorsesrock. No, he usually didnt want me to know. He knew I would be so distressed that I may have a break down. I am the one that accused the custodian as the possible suspect. My son didnt want to accuse anybody; I was the one that talked him into doing so. I grilled him on all the details and formed my own conclusion/accusation. I feel like such a bad parent. I have probably destroyed him with my action.</p>
<p>Did you major in drama when YOU were in college, “mom”? This gets less and less believable and more and more over the top as time goes by. “I have probably destroyed him with my action.” REALLY? </p>
<p>I doubt you destroyed your son, but you sure could have destroyed an innocent custodian based on your second-hand information. Since your son, if this is at all true, didn’t want to accuse someone, did it occur to you that maybe there was something he wasn’t saying? Like, maybe he DIDN’T lock the door behind him, or maybe it was a lot longer than “5 minutes”, or maybe he did NOT have his eye on the room at the time. Or maybe it wasn’t even in the lab-he left it sitting on a desk somewhere…maybe this whole thing was set up to cover his own behind for being careless. The possibilities are endless.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the whole thing just failed the smell test.</p>
<p>To patsmom. Im not sure what to say. I am the idiot mother that doesnt know any better. My son will never post such a thing. It took me 5 days to grill all the information off him. He got so tired of it and basically begged me to stop. If you search under the serial # of his laptop or stolen Toshiba laptop as title, you will realize that I also posted countless of messages under various username trying to figure out what to do.</p>
<p>To jmy626. I am usually na</p>
<p>So, your son begged you to stop and you ignored him? Instead you have posted “countless of messages under various username trying to figure out what to do.” Okay. Maybe he left everything in a bar? Who knows.</p>
<p>concernparent,- most of our kids have lost things or had things stolen in the past. One of the things kids learn while growing up is to make sure they are careful with their stuff.
My Dd had a sports bag with beloved jewelery and expensive team clothing stolen from outside the gym in her small private school. Everyone leaves stuff where she did and nothing was ever stolen- until it was. She also left her wallet on a plane once, and went back immediately to look for it, and it had already been stolen. Live and learn. She is much more careful now.
DS lost a bicycle last year that was locked in a carport, but it was just a little too visible to the street and a little too expensive-looking for his area. Live and learn. He bought a $40 beater to replace it.
Our kids are out there, living. Stuff happens. You’re not a bad mother and you can’t control his universe. Ease up on yourself and move on.</p>
<p>Agree that if your son is resisting working towards finding his missing items, something is seriously fishy. If he tells you to stop, then STOP. And let him work to earn $ to replace whatever he lost.</p>
<p>To sevmom and jym626. There are people that can witness that he was in the lab and was usually typing on his laptop a bit earlier. He usually thought he went crazy after his belongings were missing. He thought his brain was playing trick with him until other lab members reassured him that they usually saw him with his bag and laptop earlier and told him to call the police. The exact time it happened maybe a little off as he didn’t believe what he saw and didn’t call the police immediately. Being a kid with learning difficulty, he does have his own set of issue dealing with something that is too painful to bear. He had always begged me to stop harassing him when he was in great mental stress, he simply reversed back to his own little world.</p>
<p>The bottom line from what you’re describing then is that neither your son nor his lab members have any clue what really happened to his stuff. The custodian seems to be a convenient scapegoat. If he gets stressed out with you “harassing” him, you need to stop it. Grilling him repeatedly about this will do no good.He needs to go about replacing his stuff and moving on.Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies. Does anybody have a suggestion about how to keep his belongings safe without basically dragging his heavy school bag everywhere? He can keep all his valuable in his pocket, but it seems like the thief was also interested in his school bag with his books and notebooks in it. The laptop wasnt in the bag when it was stolen. I’m not sure if the thief took his bag to hide the laptop or actually interested in his bag. He used to keep his bag in the locked lab. Now, he has been dragging his school bag with him everywhere and had become increasing paranoid about losing it. He is also worried about misplacing it too. Sorry, I had been grilling him about that too.</p>
<p>To jmy626. This is a duplicate of post #70. Could you please share your knowledge regarding what I should do if I find something similar to my sons laptop on craigslist? How do I go about confronting the person that list the laptop? Since I screwed up so much on this post, Im not sure what to do. If I contact the police and later found out that it is not the one, am I be accusing people of theft again. Since like the only way to identify the laptop with certainty is checking the serial #, I am not sure of anyway to get the person listing the laptop to let me check the serial #. Also, do you know anything about Pawn Alert? Is it any good in tracking the stolen items? Please share your knowledge.</p>
<p>They have locks for laptops.</p>
<p>Alternatively, a desk drawer may have a lock on it. (Of course, if the custodian took it, they may have a key for that too.)</p>
<p>To collegealum314 Thanks for your reply. I heard from a guy that a laptop lock can only deter a thief for 15 minutes maximum. He said there is some sort of tool that can cut the lock easily. I’m not sure if he is correct or not. Unfortunately, my son doesn’t have a locked drawer. I’m not sure if he will trust the lock on the drawer either.</p>
<p>It is true that laptop locks can be cut easily-- most campus thefts are a crime of convenience and the locks can prevent some of those. Someone can’t just swipe it off a table walking by, they need to have the right tool and enough time to use it. I bought one thinking I would use it and ultimately it was less trouble to just carry all my things with me at all times unless they were locked in my dorm. Not exactly convenient but so far as I am aware this is just a fact of life at most colleges.</p>