Monday, November 07, 2005

It was a birthday trip

My wife, Diane, and I were headed south to a concert in Charlotte, NC on last weekend, and we were going to stay at my cousin’s condo. We’ve stayed with her before, and we’ve stayed at her place when she was elsewhere, so we weren’t going to a strange place.

When we arrived at Karen’s place, we loaded ourselves down with the luggage so we wouldn’t have to make the three-flight trek more than once. When we got to the door, Diane, who had the lighter load and the free hand, unlocked the handle lock and then the deadbolt. As we struggled to get through the door with our loads, we heard a sound that immediately sent a chill down our spines: It was the sound of the alarm system telling us that we had less than 60 seconds to enter the code to turn it off before the thing screamed “break-in.”

Since we had stayed there before, we had been given that code. But that was months ago, and Karen didn’t remind me that this was something we needed to worry about. In fact, she had been there earlier in the day, and had left with a couple of her buddies for a weekend trip of her own only a couple of hours earlier, and wasn’t supposed to arm the alarm.

Well, you guessed it: not long after that initial recognition, the alarm began to sound. It was loud. It could be heard plainly for quite a distance. It was also alerting the security company that one of their customers’ homes was being broken into.

I tried every trick I could think of to turn the damned thing off. Nothing worked. The security company called and my wife answered the phone. I could hear Diane shouting over the alarm from the next room. They asked her name, which, of course, she gave them, and they asked if she had a password, which, of course, she didn’t.

A few minutes later the security company called again, and this time I answered, still having to shout to be heard. They asked my name. I gave them that. No, I didn’t have a password. At this point, the security officer asked some other questions: Am I the property owner? No. Where was the property owner? She’s visiting with friends in South Carolina. Have I tried to contact her? Yes, but I got her cell phone voice mail. We have even made some calls to find the phone number of the people she was visiting, and they didn’t answer, either.

At this point, I felt the security people understood the situation, but were bound by their duty to follow a procedure. I was told that the Davidson Police Department had been notified. Visions of handcuffs, mug shots and fingerprinting raced through my mind. What a birthday this was going to be!

Not long after the second call, a Davidson Police officer knocked on the door. She was very polite and efficient, and understood the situation. She, of course, asked for some identification, and an explanation, but she didn’t handcuff me, or take me to jail. She did say that the alarm on most security systems would stop after a while.

One more call from the security people: Name? Password? By this time, the alarm had stopped.

Diane and I were very (I thought) thoughtful about this situation. We made calls to find out how to reach the people hosting Karen. We asked some other friends who have a place nearby which boat company Karen’s son works for, and called him. He was able to give us the code to shut off the alarm system, when it started again, and he had a good guess at the password. When Diane left to go find some breakfast for the weekend, I closed the door to the deck, and the alarm went off again. This time, I had the code.

Finally, Karen, who had been enjoying a beautiful afternoon on the lake with her friends, got our SOS, and called. I thanked her for her hospitality.

1 Comments:

Blogger Buffalo said...

Loved this one, Mr. Shott. So very funny!

5:35 PM  

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