SF tourist shows how she tracked down stolen luggage in viral TikToks

August 5, 2022

A tourist from Vancouver explained how she managed to track down the person who allegedly stole her luggage from the trunk of her boyfriend’s parked car during a trip to San Francisco last month.

In a series of TikTok videos posted on July 13 and July 14, user @Kellykwan0 said she and her boyfriend had checked out of their hotel in the morning to meet some friends and have lunch at Dumpling Home. Kelly mentioned that they took their luggage with them, admitting it was “the first mistake already, we should not have done that.”

“Then we parked on the street, which was our second mistake. In San Francisco, you should always park in a parking garage,” the TikTok user continued. “But it was also the middle of the day and we put everything in the trunk with the cover on top so you couldn’t see our stuff.”

The TikTok user said they checked her boyfriend’s car after lunch with their friends and saw that everything was still there. Soon after that, they went to their friend’s apartment, and after returning to the vehicle, they discovered that “all of their stuff” was gone.

“After visiting my friend’s apartment, we walked back to our car, and when we opened the car doors we noticed that there was stuff all over the front seats, like some face masks and a shirt that was not ours,” Kelly explained, adding that they realized it was really their car when they saw items they had previously purchased in the back of the vehicle.

According to Kelly, her boyfriend went to the trunk to check their belongings and saw that her luggage was gone. Kelly claimed that the robbers took “my two luggages, his backpack and everything else but left his shoes and a bouquet of roses gave me.”

“Also, none of the car windows had been smashed, so we didn’t even know how they got into the car – so, it was either that we didn’t lock the car properly or they pried the car door open, we don’t know,” Kelly added. After she called 911 to report the incident, the dispatcher suggested that she and her boyfriend head over to the nearest police station as that would be faster than waiting for the authorities to arrive at the scene of the crime.

Upon arriving at the station, Kelly said she saw two other victims reporting similar cases to the police, with one of them saying their car was stolen.

Using her iPad’s “Find My” feature, Kelly was purportedly able to find the location – a six-unit apartment complex – where their belongings were supposedly taken, just a 30-minute drive from where they were.

Kelly said she called the police station of the city where she believed her belongings were, and the police said they could do a civil standby, which would involve an officer escorting them while they ask residents about the matter. She explained that the officer would not be allowed to legally intervene during this type of situation.

She then shared that her boyfriend went around to ask about their belongings and even offered a reward, but his efforts were in vain since he and Kelly still did not know which apartment had their belongings.

The police purportedly told them they could not do anything unless they acquired a search warrant. That would have required substantial evidence, and Kelly’s “Find My” results would not have sufficed.

During their search, Kelly said she noticed that the house across from the apartment complex had a surveillance camera. She and her boyfriend asked the house’s owner if they could look into the camera’s footage, to which the owner agreed.

Though it was difficult to discern the alleged thief’s car from the footage at first, Kelly said they noticed one car that “fit the timeline of the break-in perfectly.” She explained that the car arrived at the apartment complex around 30 minutes after the estimated time of the alleged robbery, and “it did take 30 minutes to drive from that location to that address because we drove ourselves.”

However, the alleged owner of the car denied stealing anything while being questioned, according to Kelly. She also shared that she and her boyfriend were unable to get their belongings back, and she noted that soon after her boyfriend had finished knocking on the doors of the apartment complex’s residents earlier on, her iPad’s “location suddenly turned off.”

Kelly said her boyfriend lost his work phone and she lost about $10,000 worth of items from the incident, including four pairs of shoes, makeup, clothes, skincare, a laptop, an iPad and a hairdryer.

“I truly hope this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she says at the end of her last video. So far, her series of TikTok videos have accumulated a total of over 171,500 views.

Featured Image via @Kellykwan0

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