I was about 30 years old and had just had three wisdom teeth removed and was still feeling the impact of whatever the dentist had used to put me out, since one of them was badly impacted. I had just been dropped off at my apartment by a friend, gotten into bed to rest when the phone rang. I answered the phone with an ‘hello’ but was barely understandable with all the cotton in my mouth.

A young woman asked “Mike, is that you?”

“Yes”

“What happened? You don’t sound right.”

So I explained about the extraction, the drugs, cotton in my mouth, etc. while trying to figure out who was on the phone. I couldn’t figure out if it was someone I knew from work, had dated or maybe knew from college or grad school. We talked for a good ten minutes or so about inconsequential things without really saying anything that would help me identify her.

Then she asked me if we were still going to meet that weekend for the job. That was the moment when I realized I had no idea who was on the other end of the phone. I asked her which ‘mike’ she wanted to talk to, and it turned out it was a different mike whose phone number was only one digit different than mine! Also, as we continued to talk, she admitted she was still in her teens and the ‘job’ they were going to do was related to a string of B&Es in our part of town. Apparently her, and another young girl and Mike had been stealing together, although she stated she had been forced into it by circumstances.

When I asked her if she wanted to get out of that life and she told me she did, I arranged a meeting between her and a buddy of mine from high school who had just made detective on the police force. They met, she became his CI and helped him to close a number of cases. All from a strange phone call.