To Catch a Phone Thief & Get Google to Help Me.

Here's what all went down:

1. Fly from San Diego to Toronto, October of 2012 with two small boys, one on the lap.
2. Immediately put nice smart phone in seat back pocket, and even though I cherish it almost as much as my human children, I forget it there.
3. Realize this as we board the 2nd leg of our trip to Germany, tell the flight attendant.
4. Hope and pray she gets right on her little walkie-talkie to the other plane to tell them my seat number, etc., so it can be retrieved somehow.
5. Hope and pray even more she isn't yeah-yeah'ing me as I catch a glint of pure, dead hatred in her eyes towards me because I am her least favorite kind of traveller in this entire universe.
6. Arrive in Deutschland a sweaty, worried mess, and file a claim in the terminal for my lost phone, which is not only lifeblood of my work, my income, my living, but also my contact info with my family who is hopefully not trying to reach me to tell me they aren't coming to pick me up, etc. 
7. We DO get picked up, finally, and I get online to file another claim. The airline assures me their employees are all held to a very high standard of ethics, and they are doing all they can to recover my mobile. I try my hardest to believe them.
8. When all my hope dies that I will never ever see my sweet little phone ever again, I haggle with Verizon to send me its twin, my pain of loss and suffering eventually dwindles, and I forget it.
9. Months and then years and 3 other devices later, I notice my phone alerting me to the weather in Thousand Oaks, California. Odd, I live in San Diego! I've never even been to Thousand Oaks. I am fairly sure that it is only a glitch.          
10. More time passes and I continue to get Google cards about how Magic Mountain and the Getty are right around the corner from me, when I know very well I am a whopping 3 counties away.                                                                                                                               
11. The suspicion creeps up on me that I know where my long lost phone has been living. Even freaking Groupon is telling me Thousand Oaks. 
12. My mind races and I become drunk with imaginings of staking out the home, the exact address and home footprint clearly outlined on an aerial photo every time I log on. Dark glasses, slumped down in the front seat of my car, I can see in my mind's eye a prim, thin flight attendant, blonde hair in a french twist, rolling her cheap little carry on full of carrion behind her, full of scavenged goods, getting in the car for the afternoon flight. And there's me, very righteously, because after all, I have just discovered the seedy underbelly black market of airlines world wide, hoarding our hard earned hand-helds, our glamor magazines, our makeup that's just a smidge over the 1 ounce rule, etc. As she approaches her ecomony car to leave, I fly at her, baseball bat in hand - she never sees me coming. She gets the beating of a lifetime. Or at least of the 1994 Olympics.
13. I snap out of it. Dammit, Jim, I am a Realtor, not a gangster! Speaking of being a realtor, I have been building up my business, branding, & reputation since 2002. I am seasoned, I am responsive, and now my clients are beginning to think I am a flake because they aren't getting my emails. My GMAILs. NOW what's going on? Thank you, FAQ's, I am not being marked as spam. I am responding in line directly to clients I've been working with for years. My messages are just disappearing into thin air. As another lost soul in Google Help Forum is saying, "So what is a person to do? I can't control what the recipients service provider is doing!!! Is there anything I can do on my end?"
    Now, I pretty much bleed rainbows for Google. I love their devices, their apps, their EVERYTHING. I follow them like a little google groupie geek and notice when they implement new things, and I am a little bit of a Google stalker. I bother my friends that work for them and when I see them, all I want to do is talk shop. How's Google doing? Did they have a nice birthday? Are they getting enough sleep? Who is in Google's hangouts, these days? Their circles? What did they have for lunch, etc. So when Google doesn't work, not only is it devastating to my ability to earn my income, but it hurts deep in my soul, like being snubbed by a dear friend or rejected by a lover. I turn to comfort eating, go on vodka binges... I lay around looking at old screenshots of when Google and I were a real TEAM and it was perfect and everything was working. It's really ugly stuff.  
14. I call Verizon to complain about the problem, because now (almost two years after the fact) I begin to get paranoid about so much personal information I store on my phone. I ask them what to do, as I have seen something or other online that says DO NOT try to confront anyone holding ill-gotten phone goods, go through the proper authorities, blah blah blah. The girl on the line tells me, it's very unusual, but that seeing as the phone WAS registered as lost/stolen, no one would be able to use the device except for over WIFI, and that my SIM card could be sending out a location signal. The only thing she could do was recommend I go to good-old-google, and remotely wipe or delete the device. 
    
15. So, off to Google I go, and I can see and locate and ring every device I've ever owned except my long lost love. I turn to my super realtor powers of address look ups, and I find a name. The owner of the home. I google him - he's a realtor, too! I feel the grip tightening around that baseball bat once more. But then I look him up on facebook, (send him a friend request of course,) and he looks like a typical, sorta frumpy, middle aged property pimp. And I don't think I have it in me to break his knee caps, after all. Maybe my sim card just fell between his couch cushions one day he was entertaining a trampy stewardess, and it has been there ever since, sending out its lonely beacon of location whilst simultaneously marking my cyber existence as omnipresent and so therefore spam. Causing my every digital move to be zapped from the clouds, never to be marked as read by the people near and dear to me ever again. Maybe he has nothing to do with it? But then why am I being singled out for obstruction of communication? Is it because I shared that article about the government spying on us that one time? Is it because my dad's in the NRA? Am I being blocked because I went to that Ted Nugent concert and everyone thinks he's the devil? Come on, Google! I remember you when you were just a start up. I loved you way back when! And we can get these guys, Google, you and me! Together, we can blow this whole conspiracy wide open! I know you know something, leaving me cute little hints and clues to follow. And I tried calling you, but your secretary in Cupertino said you weren't emotionally available and too cool to have a technical support department. Which I typically agree with that it's unnecessary for you, because if Google does anything, Google WORKS. Other companies can disappoint and fail to deliver, but Google just does what Google is supposed to do. But this is ME, this time, Google. Your old pal! My livelihood and sanity are clearly at stake, here, I mean, I am after all appealing to and empathizing with you, while carelessly not really giving a damn for the poor fool who may or may not have wound up with my item which is very likely causing all this trouble. Do right by me, please. I'll be your best friend, scratch your back, whatever it takes. Just do me this solid and figure this one out. Yours Forever, Angela.