Police Action

Posted On January 5, 2009

This post was originally written on May 29, 2007 but never published. At the time, Jennifer thought it might screw up our chances of buying our home in Chappaqua. Since this is old news, but a good story, I figured it couldn’t hurt to post it now:

Last night, Jennifer got phone call from Tom’s parents. Apparently, they were on the way home from visiting Aunt Polly and Uncle Jim in Massachusetts and decided to stop by Chappaqua to see the new house in person. Unfortunately, they neglected to bring the address with them. They called from the parking lot of Tom and Jen’s new chuch, on the opposite side of Chappaqua from the house. With the address in hand, Mike and Laraine were now off to see the new house. In most families, this is where the story would end. But noooo….

A later call revealed that, when they arrived at the address, a local police officer was knocking on the door of the house. Seeing the car pull up to look at the house, the police approached our intrepid adventurers. The officer wanted to know if M&L were the owners of the house.

“Are you the owners’ of this house?” asked the officer. “No, my son just purchased this house,” replied Laraine. “Do you know how to get in touch with the owners?” Apparently, the owners were travelling in Vermont, stopped to get some gas and drove away, forgetting to pay for the fuel. To no one’s great surprise, this is considered a major criminal offense in Vermont. The Vermont police tracked down the car’s license plate number to the house in Chappaqua.

Jennifer’s phone rings. Laraine explains that a local Chappaqua police officer would like to talk to her. Faced with a genuinely bizarre situation, her first thought is that Mike and Laraine somehow ran into her cousin Bobby (who lives in the town next to Chappaqua) and was now playing a practical joke. Nope. This was for real.

The officer was looking for contact information. Still unaware of the entire situation, Tom provided the owner’s phone number. But since they were not home, the officer asked for the realtor’s name as well.

By this time, Mike and Laraine were chatting it up with the officer. While Mike investigated the tree that fell in last week’s storm…and is now blocking the driveway (“You now only have half a circular drive,” observed Tom’s dad.), Laraine found that the officer had recently moved to New City, a neighboring town in Rockland.