The day before had been magical -- a beautiful, warm, sunny fall Sunday in San Francisco. We lingered in the city too long but still had to buy groceries on our way home from an exhibit of watercolors and drawings from "Where the Wild Things Are." As we pulled into our driveway, I said to my husband, "I'll run in and start dinner. You bring in the bags." And that's the last thing I remember. The next morning, the glove compartment was open, papers hanging out. The GPS was gone.

I canceled four credit cards and ordered a new BlackBerry before I thought to check Craigslist. I didn't know what I'd find, but it occurred to me that pawn shops were the domain of desperate crackheads and that the savvy modern thief would hock stolen wares online. I did a search in a 40-mile radius of my neighborhood. My GPS was the first thing that popped up.

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