Yesterday’s newspaper report told a story of 35-year-old Kariem McFarlin who last month burglarized the Jobs’ family house in Palo Alto, stealing $60,000 worth of computers and personal items.
The house was under renovation and surrounded by a temporary construction barrier, leading the police to speculate the homeless man raided it by accident.
A new report sheds more light on the crime and lists the stolen items. Among them: valuable Tiffany jewelry and Steve’s wallet with his annual salary in it…
That would mean one dollar as this famously used to Jobs’ annual salary for his work as the CEO of the company he co-founded.
Among other stolen items, according to The Daily (yeah, NewsCorp.’s dying digital publication):
• three iPads
• two iMacs
• one Apple TV
• one Sodastream soda maker
• one spare key
• Mercedes car keys
• one $30,000 Tiffany & Co. platinum and aquamarine necklace
• one $28,500 Tiffany & Co. diamond and aquamarine crochet necklace
Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, was informed that her home was burglarized on July 18, after the house manager spotted the spare key missing and the home turned over.
It’s interesting how the police apprehended the suspect:
McFarlin was quickly caught after he plugged in the various hot Apple hardware, which contacted central servers to upgrade itself. A task force made of Apple security and local Palo Alto police quickly traced the hot goods back to McFarlin.
According to the report, he justified the theft by explaining how cash-strapped he was:
McFarlin told cops that he had been living in his car and had chanced upon the abandoned Jobs home while sleeping on the street there. He decided it would be the target of his first robbery. Before the heat was on, the novice McFarlin quickly Googled how to fence the jewelry.
As for Steve Jobs’ wallet, it had in it a Black Titanium American Express card, an American Express corporate card, a Bank of America Visa card, California Driver’s License and a letter.
Steve Jobs and his wife Lauren Powell Jobs
The symbolic $1 per annum paycheck was instituted shortly after Jobs had returned to Apple’s helm in 1996 as a way of demonstrating Jobs’ belief in future potential of the then struggling company.
Of course, Jobs also held Apple shares worth $2.1 billion as of last October and Disney shares he had received in exchange for Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, worth over $4.4 billion as of October 2009.
Steve once joked that his annual salary was based on attending one meeting for 50 cents while the other 50 cents was based on his performance.
Call me superstitious, but I still carry my lucky dollar bill in my wallet.
Care to share what personal items of emotional value are in your wallet?