As soon as we opened the box containing stolen items found hidden under a rock outcropping along Makaua Stream in Kaaawa, we began trying to determine how long the items had been there. They were obviously hidden after one of the times our house was burglarized. But which one?

From the degree of deterioration of the metal and leather items, my guess is they were hidden along the stream for more than 6 years. That would appear to mean they had to have been placed there after the first (2002) or second (2009) burglary.

But there were a couple of recovered items that lead me to believe they were stolen, and then hidden, in 2002.

One of the recovered items was a small plastic sleeve that might have been a card holder inserted in a wallet. This sleeve was empty, but a card that had formerly been in it left an imprint on the plastic–“Exp 2001”. That was one clue.

The second was a Sprint long distance FONCARD. Remember these cards from that long ago time when long distance and call made while “roaming” outside your home area were not included in every mobile phone plan. The Sprint card provided discounted rates when we make long distance calls while traveling away from home. Meda and I used to have a lot of travel due to our work or volunteer activities, and for years relied on this or a similar long distance plan to keep in touch.

But by the late 1990s, free nationwide long distance calls were increasingly common parts of readily available mobile plans.

On that basis, I have to conclude that I would not have had a Sprint FONCARD at the time of the 2009 or 2014 burglaries, and those would have disappeared years before But in 2002, I might have had an old wallet stashed in a drawer with an old Sprint card in it even if it was no longer being used.

Conclusion: The recovered items had been taken from our house in the November 2002 burglary, and hidden alongside the stream at that time.

Why didn’t the burglar return to retrieve the stash? There are lots of possible scenarios. Maybe he was worried about being seen in the neighborhood after a string of burglaries. Perhaps someone living in a nearby house got a dog, and it was no longer simple to return without triggering barking. Perhaps he moved out of his rented apartment in Kaaawa after this burglary. Maybe other burglary victims had also been putting pressure on him. Maybe he was getting heavier into drugs and retrieving items from a former crime no longer seemed important. Maybe he just forgot where they had been hidden. There are lots of possibilities. The fact is that we’ll never be able to tie up that little loose end.