Coincidence – Chapter 2
As mentioned in an earlier post about coincidence (link), I rent out various types of accommodations: rooms (per day or a few nights) and for longer terms studios and apartments, often to companies for their employees. In one specific building I manage five apartments and a studio, which I all rent from the owner and then sublet. There is one more apartment in that same building that I don’t manage.
The building has a classic entrance with two doors. The first door is always open and separates the entrance hall from the street. In this hall are the mailboxes, a call panel for the apartments, and a lockbox for keys. The second door leads to the stairwell and elevator and must always be closed for security reasons. Yet this door sometimes remains temporarily open when goods are being loaded in or out. To make this easier, I made a simple construction with a rope, so the door doesn’t keep falling shut.
The night of the break-in
Until recently, this way of working had never caused problems. But on the night from Saturday to Sunday, things went wrong. Sunday morning I received a message from an employee in apartment 2: “Oops, my bike is gone. Do you know what happened?” In the entrance hall there were normally two bikes: his and that of the permanent resident of the apartment I don’t manage.
Still sleepy, I reviewed the camera footage from that night. I saw that three people were staying in one of my apartments. Two of them came in first and opened the second door for the third. When that third person arrived, he didn’t lock the door again. Possibly he thought the door had accidentally remained open, or he simply wasn’t paying attention—perhaps under the influence of alcohol. Either way, the door remained wide open from 00:30, allowing anyone to enter, including the basement where there usually aren’t valuable items but where various doors are open.
The first intruder
At 01:30 an unknown man entered the building. On the camera footage I saw that he first looked at the bikes and then went into the basement. The basement also has cameras, and on those you could see that he inspected multiple rooms. I later heard from a resident that he even knocked on various doors, up to the sixth floor. On the fifth floor—where the tenants who had left the door open were staying—someone did answer, though I don’t know exactly what was discussed there.
Not much later he left the building with my toolbox. Around 04:00 two more people appeared on the footage. They worked very systematically in the basement: box after box, locker after locker. Eventually they took both bikes and, strangely enough, also my garbage bags. Otherwise nothing of value seemed to have disappeared at that point.
The damage and the camera footage
The perpetrators wore jackets, hoods and scarves over their faces. Their faces were unrecognizable, but their build, the color of their clothing and their backpacks were clearly visible. Since the bikes weren’t mine and the rest of the damage seemed limited, I initially had little desire to invest much time in this. Moreover, when I inquired with my insurance, it turned out the deductible was too high to file a claim.
An unexpected turn
Nevertheless, I sent the screenshots I had made to the employee whose bike was stolen. He was determined to find the perpetrators and paid attention to every detail: a green jacket with white hood, a Basic Fit backpack, a recognizable build. That same Sunday evening I received a message: “Everything has been found.” He had shown the screenshots to a friend, who immediately recognized the perpetrator from an earlier encounter in a café. They confronted the man, who admitted to the theft. It turned out to be someone with drug problems who lived off social welfare.
It was agreed that he would return all stolen goods and pay compensation, in exchange for no official report being filed. He also received a clear warning and, as I understood, a firm punishment. Monday morning I saw on the camera footage that the employee had his bike back and was riding it to work again.
Reflection
This whole incident reminds me of Derek Sivers, who writes about coincidence in his book How to Live. What a coincidence that one screenshot, sent to exactly the right person, led to finding the perpetrator in no time. Normally I might not share footage or take further action. The chance that everything would work out so quickly is small. But it happened—and it shows once again how surprisingly coincidence can sometimes turn out.