The Night My IPhone was Stolen

Matt wanted to go to a hookah bar. Alright, I'll go - hookah's pretty good and it makes for a fun night. Matt wants to go to his favourite hookah bar in San Francisco. Maybe... ok. Matt wants to go to his favourite hookah bar on a Sunday night, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff is visiting our command to speak. Matt... you're pushing it. But you definitely know me - I'm up for it.

Maybe that wasn't such a bright idea. It's about a 2.5 hour drive from Monterey to San Fran, and our intention was to leave by 2:00 am so we could still have time to change into uniform before the beginning of the working day.

At about 12:30 am, I had finally had enough, and I couldn't stand the hookah smoke anymore. Going outside and sitting right outside the door seemed like a good option. After all, there were about 6 other people sitting around the entrance, smoking outside. I got my fresh air though, and that was all I cared about. I still had another hour and a half, so I decided to play some games on my iPhone.

People came and went, and a few Arabic guys came outside and sat down next to me to chat a while. Southpole shirts and DC shoes, LA flat-bill hats... maybe that will give you an idea about them. No, these wanna-be ganstas were not the ones that attacked me. One of them already had an iPhone and the other two had Blackberry's, which gave us a topic of conversation for a while.

1:30 am came around and they had to go. That gave me a half hour of peaceful phone time before all of a sudden...

Off to my right, I got a bad vibe. I noticed with peripheral vision that a skinny black guy had somewhat of a bad attitude. He was ranting to his girlfriend about who-knows-what. For some reason, I got that feeling of eyes locking on to me though. Although I was looking at my phone, I knew he was looking at me. I should have taken this moment to stand up and go back inside - intuition is usually right. However, I figured that if I just minded my own business that he would leave me alone.

"Man, f*** you n*gg*!" he yelled as he kicked my hands, causing the phone to shoot upward. In a split second, he reached out and caught my phone.

My first thought was, "Man... that was cool!" Despite this, my first reaction was to jump up, wrap my arm around his neck and throw him to the ground. Hands started gripping all around, as people tried to break it up. As Killer started ramming upward on me though, I knew I had to sober him. Using my right hand to gouge his eyes and my left to punch him in the back of the head, he started shouting, "Get off me! I didn't even do anything!"

You've got to be kidding me! He's going to pull that?

During the brawl, my sandals and glasses came off. I knew I would have to retrieve my glasses if I was going to do anything. I jumped off him in the direction of my glasses and groped around. Found them!

As I stood up and turned around, I saw him turn the corner, grinning. There were now over fifteen people around, and nobody tried to stop him. What did this mean to me? It meant I would have to handle it myself. Leaving my sandals behind so I could run faster, I sprinted after him. As I found out from Matt later that night, he had looked at his friend at this moment and said, "We can't let him go alone."

Killer turned around several times, raising his arms and making fists, but would angle his arms parallel to the ground. Each time he did this, I just started wailing on him, and he'd turn and keep running. At one point, when he turned around, I asked him, "Where on Earth did you learn how to fight? Your form is horrible." That time, he didn't even leave enough time to fight, because the expression on his face said, "I've gotta get out of here."

Killer crosses the street and tries squeezing between a couple of parked cars. Am I going to squeeze? No way. I jumped over the hood and grabbed him mid-air. In fact, I wish I had a video camera, or someone else would re-enact it (haha). We both landed hard on the ground, but he landed on bottom.

As he got up, Matt's friend, who is around 250 lbs, body-slammed him against the wall, and I was up on him punching him in the kidney. He squirmed his way out and kept running.

We came up on a group of about 10 people who were hanging in the streets, smoking weed. Killer thought he found refuge, but none of them were on his side. Matt's friend pulled out his phone to call the cops, but one of Killer's friends ran out to grab his phone and threw it at the ground. Busted. Killer started playing pass-around with my phone between his girlfriend and Mr. Busted.

When I couldn't figure out which one had my phone, I started after Killer. He claimed he didn't have my phone, so I told him that he'd better get my phone back to me if he cared to get away tonight.

Then, what seemed to be out of nowhere, six cop cars arrived. Apparently, someone else had seen the commotion and took the initiative. I immediately spat out what happened as a cop got out of the car. Killer's girl was patted down, and when they determined she didn't have it, she was allowed to run off. The cops started chasing Killer, and Killer was dumb enough to elbow one in the face when the cop grabbed him around the waist.

Using his bodyweight, the cop leaned and slammed the guy against the brick building, busting Killer's head open. Bleeding and dazed, Killer limped around until the cops picked him up and brought him to a cage van. They patted him down, then packed him away.

I normally despise cops, but they were so cool that night. An ex-marine shook my hand and said he was happy to hear that somebody actually didn't let a crook run off. He was tired of civilians letting crooks get away with things.

After giving them the story and calling our headquarters to inform them we would be late, we headed back, giving me a couple hours to contemplate what had just happened. Damn, that was a fun night.