My husband and I spent this past weekend in Mendocino County, enjoying wine country and a visit with friends in our first “get away” in 2 years since starting the house. Too bad the memory had to be spoiled like this.
This evening (Monday after), a Mendocino county sheriff contacted my husband Chris and accused us of leaving a restaurant in Mendocino county that same weekend without paying. In a town called Gualala, where we did not stop, at a restaurant The St. Orres, where we did not eat. The sheriff told us we must pay the $110 bill or face “arrest” and “criminal charges.” He did not regard our comments to the contrary as worth listening to, and instead cited that he had a “verified license” and an “eye witness” account against us. And he kept repeating statements to the effect that we looked very guilty, indeed.
It turned out that the sheriff got the facts wrong, and made incorrect assumptions about the report without checking. The manager of the restaurant–who contacted the sheriff–spotted Chris at a gas station 50 miles north the following day, thought he “looked like the guy,” wrote down the license plate number of our van, and then made a phone call to the sheriff saying that we had done this thing. When Chris asked if his car looked the same as that of the people who didn’t pay, the manager stated that he didn’t see the car of those people.
Of course, we only learned this after Chris called the manager and asked him “How did you come by this information?” Interesting that we didn’t learn this from the sheriff. The manager also told Chris that he never even saw me at the gas station. Also interesting that the sheriff told me that the manager identified both of us as “the couple” from our driver’s license photos. The officer assumed that the manager got our license plate # at the restaurant instead of a day later at a town 50 miles north. The officer also knew that the reservation was made by a woman named “Kim,” yet he didn’t think that was odd, nor did he think it noteworthy that a manager, and not a wait person, was the one to identify the people skipping out.
The sheriff assumed right from the start that we were guilty. He kept saying “eye witness identification.” The whole thing was very upsetting and was framed immediately by the deputy as “warrant for your arrest” and “criminal charges.” Even though no official report had yet been filled out. Of course we know about the reliability of eye witness ID.
It was pure luck that we got out of this because we happened to have a credit card charge for the same day/hour in a town 50 miles north that we could prove. It was at a hotel that we decided on a total lark to stay in. Otherwise, we’d be dealing with this for the next few days and be wrongfully accused, or more likely, out the price of someone else’s dinner.
My advice to you? Make sure you wear mis-matched clothing wherever you go (that way people will remember you), take pictures of people who see you (with time stamps), and geo-track your every step, because you never know when you might narrowly miss arrest, or have to pay $110 to get off the hook.
