The Phone Thief

Valeria had been in New York for exactly four hours when she had her phone stolen. She was standing in the middle of Times Square, surrounded by giant screens and yellow taxis, trying to take the perfect photo to send to her mother in Bogota. A man bumped into her, apologized and walked on. Ten seconds later she realized that her hand was empty. Her phone had gone, and so had the man.

It is often said that New York is a city where nobody stops to help. That afternoon, at least three people did. A woman selling hot dogs called a police officer, who wrote down a description and gave Valeria a card with a number on it. A group of students from Ohio lent her a phone so she could cancel her bank cards. But the police officer was honest with her. "Phones are stolen here every day," he said. "I'm afraid it's very unlikely you'll get it back."

Then Valeria remembered her tablet. It was in her backpack, and it was connected to the same account as her phone. She sat down on the steps in the middle of the square, opened the tracking app and held her breath. A small blue dot appeared on the map. It was moving south along Seventh Avenue, quite fast. Whoever had her phone was in a car.

She ran to the edge of the square and waved at the first taxi she saw. The driver was an older man with gray hair and a radio playing jazz. His name, according to the card on the dashboard, was Samuel Osei. Valeria showed him the screen and explained, a little breathlessly, what had happened. Mr. Osei looked at the dot, looked at her and turned off the jazz. "Put your seat belt on," he said.

Mr. Osei had been driving a taxi in Manhattan for thirty-one years, and he was said by the other drivers to know every street, every shortcut and every traffic light on the island. Valeria believed it within five minutes. While the blue dot moved down Seventh Avenue, he turned left, then right, then through a narrow street she would never have noticed, and suddenly they were only two blocks behind it.

The dot crossed Fourteenth Street, went through Greenwich Village and then stopped. Mr. Osei slowed down. "Canal Street," he said. "It is believed that half the stolen phones in this city end up on Canal Street. People sell them in the little electronics shops." Valeria felt her stomach turn. If the phone was sold, it would be wiped clean and she would lose every photo from the trip, including the ones of her grandmother's birthday the week before.

The dot had stopped outside a tiny shop with phone cases hanging in the window. Mr. Osei parked, which in that part of the city was a miracle in itself, and told Valeria to call the police number on the card while he went in first. Through the window, she saw him greet the owner, a man behind the counter, with a handshake and a laugh. They talked for a minute. Then the owner reached under the counter and put a phone on the glass. It had a sticker of a yellow flower on the back. It was hers.

It turned out that the man who had stolen it had tried to sell it ten minutes earlier. The owner, who was Mr. Osei's nephew, had been suspicious: the phone was locked, the thief was nervous and he wanted cash immediately. So he had told the man to come back in an hour, and kept the phone under the counter. "People think everyone on this street buys stolen phones," the nephew said. "Most of us don't. It gets us into trouble."

The police arrived twenty minutes later, and when the thief came back for his money, they were waiting for him. He is reported to have stolen at least six phones in Times Square that week. Valeria had to sign a statement and have her phone photographed as evidence, but she was allowed to keep it.

When she tried to pay Mr. Osei for the journey, he refused. "Send me a postcard from Bogota," he said. She did better than that. The first photo on her phone after the long list of birthday pictures is a selfie of Valeria, Mr. Osei and his nephew outside a tiny shop on Canal Street. Her mother has it as her screen background now.