Last year's vacation on Sanibel was full of medical emergencies - not ours, but the neighbors next door. Three times they called me to assess and three times I called the ambulance for them.
This year it seems that it's all about calling the cops.
Shortly after we arrived, our friend Gayle told us there had been a string of burglaries on the island, with beachfront condos being entered and jewelry and cash being stolen. The burglaries were being well publicized in the hope that a tip would produce a lead and then a suspect.
Little did we think we might become involved.
Then yesterday morning, someone pounded on our door. I went to the door, asked who it was, and the answer came back, "Maintenance!"
I opened the door to find a man and woman standing there. The man was holding a large ring of keys and said "they told us this unit was empty." I explained that we had been in residence for a while and would be here a while longer. The woman said she wanted to look at the unit to see if it would be a good one for her daughter to rent. I asked why no one from the rental agency had called to ask if we would let someone in to see the unit. No answer. I decided it would not be a good choice to let two unidentified people into the condo and said it wasn't a good time, but that she could come back today. She said "what time?" and I said 10.
After they left, we called our rental agent and learned she had no knowledge of this couple. She said she'd do some calling around.
This morning she called back to say she had spoken with just about every rental agency on the island and no one knew anything about these people. She advised us to not let them in when they returned.
Ten o'clock came and went this morning and no one came to the door. We talked it over and decided that we should alert the police to our visitors and file a report.
The next knock on the door was Officer Boots of the Sanibel Police Department. He sat at the kitchen counter so that he could ask questions and write his report at the same time. After getting all our info about the encounter yesterday, together with the info from the rental agent, and having a quick phone conversation (at my suggestion) with the condo's longtime owner, he called the property maintenance company.
We all then learned that indeed, the man at the door yesterday was the property company's on-site maintenance man and the woman was a renter in another building who was from Switzerland. She had approached the maintenance man about letting her into an empty condo, he called his company and they told him ours was empty. (Not!). After we declined to let them in yesterday, the company told her of another empty condo and she looked at that one. She didn't bother to notify us that she wouldn't be keeping her appointment.
The officer handled the situation well, telling the woman at the property management company that there had been a break in the circle of communication and that she should not authorize entry into condos that were occupied. She told the officer that the rental agencies don't always inform her company when condos are full or empty, so she just sends the maintenance guy to accompany the interested party. He informed her that especially with the spate of burglaries that had been occurring along the beachfront, we "absolutely" handled the situation as we should have, and that the communication link between the rental agencies and the property management company needed to be fixed.
We thanked him for his time and he left...in his marked car that had been sitting in the parking lot for about an hour...and who knows what the neighbors think now!!
Some time after he left, I went to the Sanibel Police Department website and learned that there is a $25,000 CASH REWARD for information leading to the arrest of the burglary suspects. What an unexpected coup that would have been, if our visitors had turned out to be the bad guys. And as the condo owner said, "I thought you were going to break the case."
Not this time, I'm afraid. And let's hope that the rest of our vacation is uneventful and there is no need to again call the cops!
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