Throughout the evening, Jeremy was able to track the phone with the GPS and the phone's hotspot which indicated that the phone was still in the restaurant. He waited until all the customers had left and the signal was still the strongest close to the kitchen and washroom areas. There were 2 kitchen staff washing dishes and when Jeremy asked them if they saw a phone, they didn't fess up. But by 11:30pm, the signal got weak which meant that the phone had left the building. He was still able to track the GPS signal and saw that the phone moved to Sheppard and Markham Road area. He came home sans phone and we both thought that the chances were slim that we would get the phone back.
I wasn't able to sleep very well and woke up with a massive headache at 5am. After breakfast, we went (with both kids in tow) back to the restaurant. I told the manager that we are suspecting one of his staff took the phone because of how the signal got weak after all the customers had left and the phone moved locations. He took offense to me accusing his staff without any hard evidence and told me to report it to the police. He said his staff are honest people, even returning thousands of dollars in cash to a customer once. He told me that there's closed circuit cameras and I was welcome to view it but I had to wait until the owner came in and he didn't know when she would be in. I asked him to call her and the owner said she would be back in 45 minutes. So we waited. In the mean time, the same manager gave us tea and a plate of cookies for Keith which I thought was really nice, considering the circumstances.
When the owner came in, she was at first reluctant but she became more cooperative. She asked her daughter to set up the footage for us to watch. We watched for about 15 minutes and saw the footage of Jeremy and Keith walking past the backdoor to the bathroom. To our surprise, the next piece of footage was minutes later when the kitchen dishwasher walked past holding a phone that looked like Jeremy's with a white case!
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| Here's a screen shot of the phone clearly in view |
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| A close-up of the same shot |
We couldn't believe it. It's a miracle that the video caught her in the act. The manager took a look at the video and went inside to talk to the woman. A few minutes later, he came out with the good news that she is going to get us our phone.
When she came in with our phone, 'she' is a middle aged woman from China, one of the kitchen workers that Jeremy talked to last night. If I give her the benefit of the doubt, she may not have understood Jeremy's English, broken Chinese and 'phone' hand gestures. When I asked why she didn't answer the calls, she said she doesn't know how to use the phone which I also believe but it doesn't explain why she didn't tell anyone that she found it in the first place. The manager then told her that when she finds something, she has to tell someone - this appeared to be a novel concept to her.
In any case, I'm glad we were able to find the phone. Now I'm ready to ring in the New Year!
