The Jamestown Police Department and a family from Vermont are asking the public for help finding a laptop computer and bag that was accidentally left in the Cherry Street Parking Ramp recently.
On Aug. 8, Victoria Hall, her 7-year-old son and her mother-in-law were preparing to get back on the road after staying overnight at the Clarion Hotel on West Fourth Street. It was a hectic journey they had endured and a stressful trip, and in the chaos, the Swiss Army, rolling laptop briefcase was left behind.
"We were traveling back home to Vermont from a trip to visit my father in St. Louis, Mo.," Ms. Hall said. "We were packing the van and my son was pushing the laptop bag. I usually always handle it but it belongs to his father and he was missing him, so I let him take care of it."
As the family walked across the bridge from the Clarion to the parking ramp, it seems her young son left the bag on the passenger's side of the van as it was too heavy for him to lift.
"I hit the switch to close the sliding door, believing we had everything inside, and we took off," she said. "Then about an hour an a half down Interstate 86, we were at a rest stop in Allegany County and I realized it was gone."
Considering her son has extreme allergies and his medicine was inside a camouflage neoprene bag in the briefcase, panic consumed the woman. After calling the hotel back and then the Jamestown police, Ms. Hall continued on the road before stopping in Angelica.
She met a woman named Barb at the First Baptist Church in Angelica and after making a few more phone calls, and taking time to pray together, they hit the road once more, hoping someone would do the right thing.
"I have all of our family's pictures on that computer and the external hard drive with it," she said. "They are irreplaceable and I didn't know what I was going to do. I filed the police report and after calming down, we started driving again."
The family eventually made their way back to New England, but their visit to Jamestown wasn't positive for a number of reasons, the most serious being someone stole the bag and its contents.
The laptop is a Dell Vastro 1720 with a glossy black finish. It has a 17-inch screen and was in the bag along with a silver Maxtor external hard drive. Her son's medicine bag with an EpiPen and his medical ID cards were also inside.
Ms. Hall and her family is offering a reward for the return of their property and police have said that it can be dropped off at the police station anytime with no questions asked.
Anyone with information about the bag's whereabouts can call the detective's bureau at 483-7537 or call the department's confidential tip line at 483-TIPS. Information can also be submitted online on the JPD's Facebook and MySpace pages, via e-mail at jpdfio@yahoo.com, or the public safety section of the city's website at www.jamestownny.net. Information can be submitted anonymously and will be treated confidentially.