A few weeks ago, my son Noah who is 13 years old now, went on over to an apartment complex nearbyWhich is not one of the best areas to be in. However, he does have several friends that live in the vicinity, either across the street in the developments or there in the apartments them self. All of the kids are affected by the music of today. Around here, they seem to think that they are Thugged Out gangsters and it’s a little humorous watching them interact as they speak in slang about subjects that they have utterly no clue about. Any of them are middle-class Caucasian kids who are spoiled by their parents LOL. Some of them were saying they would jack people up, shoot somebody or even steal. While that part of it’s not funny at all, it just goes to show just how much the music affects the minds of our youthful generation. my son Noah has a heart of gold. He tries to befriend everybody. And while he does slip into some of the influences of his peers, he doesn’t really do anything wrong. He’s always the voice of reason actually, repeating advice back to his friends that I have given to him myself. He’s a good kid but you know… They have to fit in somehow so I have heard him speaking like them from time to time. Believe me I have corrected him about it. Now, he doesn’t speak about things like that. However he still has a few friends in his circle that are trying to be something that they’re not. My boy, wants to be like an excepted by everybody. He’s a sweetheart and would do anything for any person that asked him. Well one day, he had gone over to the apartment complex to visit a friend of his. A 16-year-old boy had approached him that he had heard about and even ran into a few times, around the neighborhood. The older kid, knew some of the younger kids but my son Noah knows. In the trusting in the even dividual that my son is at this age, he thought because this older kid Zack knew some of the same people, that he was trusting enough to talk to. However the kid asked to use my sons cell phone. I had just bought him this phone for Christmas last year and I’ve been struggling to pay it off. My son told him no because I’ve often taught him not to allow other people to touch his things if you never know what can happen. The strange thing about all of this was, when my son told me he was heading over there, I did warn him that something was going to happen that he should be cautious. But my son, often thinks that he has everything in check.

Well, you can all probably figure out what happen next. Zack (last name withheld for privacy) snatched the phone from my son’s hand. my son didn’t know what to do. Is non-confrontational and he was always taught not to fight except if he had to defend himself. The kid had been threatening him to physically beat him up if he hadn’t given him the phone to begin with, but my son stood his ground without having to resort to violence. Nevertheless, the kids just took the phone away from him being much bigger than him. My son also was wearing a silver chain that held my dad’s ashes. As you know he recently passed away in October. Zack also tried to snatch the chain off of my boys neck. When my son told him it had my father’s remains, thankfully he let go. But off he went, into the woods running with my son’s phone. so Noah tried to chase after him, I don’t really know what he expected to do at that point if he had caught up to him. He was a little fearful to fight but he would have done what he had to do to protect himself and his property. However, it was getting late and I think he was so overwhelmed from the situation that he had gotten a little lost there in the woods. Granted, this is all happening about two or three blocks from my own home.

There was another family that had come outside just in the nick of time. My son no explain to them what it happened and the young gentleman drove my son home so that he could get me and my daughter involved to help him. While I was very upset about the fact that my son got into a strangers car, I understood that this was the first time that something like this had happened and then he was basically acting out in panic. I had the baby with me and was just about to begin working for the evening. I have to start a little later in the afternoon because of the sunlight with my energy. It drains me and I don’t feel very well during the earlier hours of the day. However, my son came in devastated. I felt as though it would be wise to head on over where the kid lived and called the police. My mother though, wanted to take a ride with my daughter over there instead of letting me. While the two of them went to Zack’s apartment to confront him, I called the phone company to get the phone shut down… just in case. The whole time that Amber and my mom spoke to the police and Zach, his own mother was in the background. She very well knew what her son was doing. A single mother addicted to drugs, I thought; “how sad for someone to allow their young kid to throw their life away is a thief just for a few extra hundred dollars”. It was apparent that he wanted the phone to sell. Nevertheless, the police did nothing. This was the second time actually, that the police did not help us in a situation. Earlier last year, another boy had tried to steal my sons bike. Go figure, he happened to be one of Zacks friends. luckily the boy gave the bike back to my son eventually after Amber’s boyfriend confronted him about it. But we had called the police at first, and they didn’t try to help even in the least. Here we were with a situation where an older boy almost an adult, stole something from my son threatening bodily injury. You would think the police would’ve taken it seriously.

So we went back to the police department about a week later to push the police report a little further so that maybe they would get on top of trying to get the phone back.  The officer asked me to come back in two days to talk to the detective and get a copy of the police report to take to the phone company so that I wouldn’t owe the remaining purchase fee which was several hundred dollars still. However, when we went back, they still hadn’t even finished the report. I was devastated. I couldn’t even rely on my own local police.  feeling defeated, I prayed to the Lord for help. However I felt it best to just leave the situation alone from there. My daughter wanted to go over there and confront the boy a second time, but I felt as though that would only create an even bigger circle of problems. But this is where the story gets pretty interesting…

Karma is a wonderful weapon. Asking the heavens for help I just placed my face in them knowing, but somehow someway they would figure everything out for me. My daughter Amber happened to be the answer. She saw me home with discovered that Zack had put the phone up on some app for sale. In fact he had several cellular phones that he had stolen from other children in the local area, up there for pretty cheap price considering they were some pretty expensive phones. But lo and behold, there was my son Noah’s phone. There was no mistaking it. My son walked around with that phone in his hand so often, I often thought it became a part of him LOL Even my baby Adri sees my son with his AirPods, his hover board and his phone and thinks he’s some kind of fleshly robot LOL I’m sure there are other parents out there that know exactly what I’m talking about. Anyhow Zack had mentioned that the phone was also from Verizon. He gave a pretty detailed description in the ad that he had posted for the phone as he was selling it. My daughter didn’t like the fact that some 16-year-old punk had gotten over on the family. She’s tired of people walking all over us and certainly didn’t want me to have to suffer for the cost of extra money that I didn’t have. Like I said I still owed money on that phone and without insurance who knows, would the phone company still make me pay it back? She didn’t wanna take a chance. So she catfished him.

My daughter made a fake profile on that same app that Zack was using for his sales. Contacting him as a potential buyer, the two of them discussed a price and place to meet. Amber told her boyfriend about it. Just in case Zack tried to assault her or pull anything, Amber took her boyfriend with her on the night that she was scheduled to meet up with him.. Her boyfriend wanted to handle the situation. Unsuspecting Zack thought he was going to make a nice $300 for himself. Very excited, he saw Amber’s boyfriend walking up and gave him a pretty clever sales pitch. Amber’s boyfriend told him he wanted to see the phone first, since he was buying it and so Zack handed him Noah’s phone so that he could inspect his “potential buy”. Amber’s boyfriend check the serial number to make sure that it was Noah’s phone so that he wasn’t accidentally stealing somebody else’s already stolen property LOL. Sure enough it was definitely Noah’s. So Zach asked for the money for the phone but Amber’s boyfriend told him, “Thanks, I’ll be taking this back. This is Noah’s phone.”

Zack denied that the phone was stolen or that it was Noah’s… Or even that he had even known Noah, but Amber’s boyfriend had told him that the serial number clearly match the one that he had for Noah’s phone from the package that we still had back at the house. However, Amber and her boyfriend had written the serial number down. Our phone carrier also had a copy of it. The con… had been conned!  amber’s boyfriend told him if he messed with Noah again, there would be a problem. He added the intimidation at the end because he noticed that Noah was seemingly becoming a target of theft by the other kids, it being that both his bike and cell phone had been stolen already within a year time. 

So we got the phone back, and that’s karma LOL funny how it worked out.

Please be sure to educate your children on the fact that even other kids commit criminal acts these days. Even just a few blocks from my own home, my son was not safe. He’s not allowed to go outside without a chaperone now, helping him get from place to place.