There was no commotion causing container, but the cops did pay a visit last night
Walking my dogs last night, around 10:45, I came across a wallet lying on the grass next to the sidewalk. I thought, “Woohoo, payday!” No, not really, I’ve lost my wallet before and someone was kind enough to return it to me fully intact, and I thought that this was my opportunity to pay it forward. However, upon searching the wallet for identification (some kid by the name of Drake Aragon), I came across a little baggie of powder.
My first impulse was to smell the powder to see what it was. No, I’m kidding… the last time I did that was in 7th grade when I found some clumped-up powder in my jean jacket. I broke it up on my desk (at school) and took a good hard sniff. Ever had laundry detergent up the nose? I spent the rest of the class controlling the tears coming out of my eyes due to the burning in my olfactory organ! I’m not claiming that I was the brightest kid… Up until I found the little baggie I was considering just finding the kid’s address and going and dropping off the wallet (putting it in an envelope with the kid’s name and dropping it on the front porch, due to the late hour). But, figuring that I was dealing with some illegal substance, I thought I would let the police handle it.
Upon my arrival at home, I checked Google maps to verify the address where I found the wallet, wrote it on a sticky note, and Audrey and I drove to the new Highlands Ranch Sheriff’s Department sub-station near the corner of Broadway and Highlands Ranch Parkway. Wouldn’t you know… closes at 5:30 PM. So, I drove to the likely places where I’ve seen Douglas County’s finest at night – King Soopers parking lot, Shea Stadium parking lot, etc. I mean, it was Sunday night in Highlands Ranch, how busy could they be? But I didn’t find any likely suspects, so I turned on to my street, only to look in the rear-view mirror and see a cop waiting at the light behind me. I flip a U-turn, but, the cop had already taken a left-turn down a residential street. I zoomed off in that direction (after the light changed to my favor) but couldn’t find him (or her… I don’t want to assume that only male cops work the tough beat on the mean streets of Highlands Ranch). So, I drove home.
I found the Douglas County non-emergency number and explained the situation to the woman on duty at dispatch. She asked me what the substance was, or why I thought it was drugs. I told her that even though I had long hair, it didn’t mean that I was used to identifying foreign substances in random wallets, but based on the location of the baggie in the wallet (it was shoved in an inner slot behind the kid’s driving permit), and the contents (would a kid randomly carry around a baggie of laundry detergent in his wallet?), I could make a pretty good assumption. She told me an officer was already on the way.
Not that I keep a messy house, but, as we were having a guest over, I thought (as Audrey did) that we should probably pick up a little bit. I cleared Audrey’s laptop off the dining-room table, put a few dishes in the dishwasher, and wiped down the kitchen counters. Then I thought, “Really? Is the cop going to care if I have a spotless kitchen?” I suppose if I was used to having cops over more often, I wouldn’t worry about how the house looked. Maybe I was concerned that he would think, “Wow, maybe this guy is just looking to get rid of some stuff and doesn’t know how to flush it down the toilet, so he stole some kids wallet and planted evidence.” I know, crazy, right? No, I really didn’t think that, but, maybe it was that I was concerned about the neighbors looking out their window and seeing a cop car in front of my house. I could imagine them shaking their heads and thinking, “Uh-huh, yeah, I thought so. That guy and his pickup truck and his long hair… it was only a matter of time.” Not that the neighbors would see the inside of my house either, but, if they asked the cop as he was leaving my house about how it looked inside, he could at least report that it was spotless.
Figuring I couldn’t do anything else to calm my nerves, I sparked up a fatty. Just kidding – I’ve never rolled a joint in my life. I actually went downstairs and watched the end of “Iron Chef America.” It was one of those rare episodes where the guest chef actually won the competition. Iron Chef Garca just didn’t cut the mustard. Or, maybe he did, but it wasn’t enough to convince the judges that he was the better chef.
The knock on the door was quiet, but, loud enough for my White Shepherd, Ilse, to hear it and perform her best “alarm bark.” I opened the door, and the guy (Sheriff in his 20’s) was standing about three feet back from the entrance, body angled slightly with one hand on his hip (near his gun), so I explained to him that the dogs were friendly. He came in and said that he was officer Solo. No, that wasn’t his real name – I forgot what it actually was, but he looked a little like a young Harrison Ford, and his last name began with an “S” so I just merged the two in my mind.
After letting the dogs smell him, I had to state for the record that it was actually the dogs that had just perfumed the air (I think Ilse got a little excited). Luckily Audrey keeps a little spray can of cinnamon for just an occasion and aromatically cleaned up the foyer as I brought Officer Solo over to the freshly-cleaned dining room table. He made some notes regarding the location where I found the wallet, a description of the wallet, and what I stated I found in the wallet. He had his flashlight out, and turned on, as his other hand picked up the wallet. Then, putting the flashlight away and stretching the examination gloves over his hands, he opened the wallet and pulled out the kid’s CO State ID. “Looks familiar,” he commented. He then pulled out the first baggie. Unwrapping it, he examined the powder at the bottom. He then pulled out a second baggie – it contained a small round pill. “Yeah, that’s not a breath-mint.” I asked him what he thought they were. “Well, the round pill is probably ecstasy. The powder could be coke or heroin.” I suggested that it might be meth. “Yeah, could be. I’ll need to take it to the lab to find out exactly what it is. They have one over here at the substation.”
Officer Solo then had me fill out some paperwork, just in case I needed to testify in court before they sent Drake to little-kid jail. He also indicated that he could call me and let me know what the substances were after he did his testing, if I was going to be up for a while. Being that it was close to 1 AM, I thought, “Sure, what’s another hour?” With the paperwork filled out, he thanked me for having him over, that he had a great time, loved the warm hospitality, and that he would have the two of us over sometime as well. Well, no, it wasn’t exactly like that, but I think he appreciated us for turning in the wallet. I watched him walk to his squad car. No neighbors came up to him asking questions about the cleanliness of my house.
About an hour later, I checked my iPhone. It showed I had missed a call. D’oh! I had turned down my ringer earlier and had forgotten to turn it back up again. I called the number back and spoke with dispatch. “Uh, hi, uh, my name is Leif, and, uh, I missed a call from an officer that just came over to my house, and , uh, he said he would call me to tell me what types of drugs I’d found, and, uh, I had my ringer off on my cell phone…” and I just stopped talking right there. If I had actually thought about what I was going to say, before I said anything, I might not have started to sound like a moron. Being the late hour that it was, my attempts at not sounding like a dweeb utterly failed. What am I talking about? I didn’t make any attempt what-so-ever. I just imagined the woman on the other end rolling her eyes as she said, “I’ll just patch you in to his phone.”
“Hi, this is Officer Solo. Thanks for calling me back!” I apologized for missing his call, and he said that the pill was indeed Ecstasy, and that the powder was meth. Hey, all of those episodes watching, “Dog the Bounty Hunter” finally paid off with my drug identification knowledge! I asked him what would happen next. “Well, we’ll contact the kid’s parents, and the kid, and see what he admits to. Then we’ll destroy the drugs.” I asked if they could bring him up on charges. “Well, we’ll see what he says. If he admits to having the drugs, we can go from there.” I said, “And, if he gets a lawyer, the lawyer can claim that I planted the drugs.” “Yeah, any half-decent lawyer would claim that because the kid wasn’t in possession of the wallet at the time, they can claim that the drugs didn’t belong to the kid.”
I thanked him for following up with me and let it go at that. I’m glad that I was able to get an infinitely-small amount of drugs off the cold hard streets of the suburbs, rejoice at the fact that some stupid druggie kid might make a different choice in his future as a result of this incident, and that I had a clean kitchen and dining room table in the morning for making breakfast.
