W

ould you think of asking for the police's help to find your cell phone if it had been stolen? Probably not in Jakarta.

When Ajianto Dwi Nugroho lost his phone, he decided to try to find it himself. The 30-year-old private sector employee launched his own three-day investigation to find his BlackBerry.

Ajianto had stayed over at his friend's place and woke up to find that his Blackberry had gone missing.

"From the beginning, I knew I should track down my cell phone by myself. The police would not do anything if I reported the theft," he told The Jakarta Post.

"There is a lot of important data in my phone, especially related to my job. The information stored in my phone is worth a lot more than the actual handset," he said.

Street smart Ajianto started asking around what might happen to a stolen phone. "My friends from the streets told me about the places cell phone thieves usually went to offload their loot," he said.

He visited places in Manggarai, Bekasi and Cakung, but to no avail. But luck was on his side. Later, he spotted an ojek driver with a motorcycle he saw near his friend's house the night his handset was stolen.

He then questioned the ojek driver. "I found out that a man had rented the motorcycle the day I lost my BlackBerry," Ajianto said.

He asked everybody in the neighborhood about the man. "I spent more than 24 hours there," he said.

The next day, he finally found the place where the man lived. A woman, who happened to be the man's girlfriend, answered the door. "I questioned her until she admitted her boyfriend had stolen and sold my BlackBerry to pay the rent."

Ajianto said he talked the girl into cooperating with him by saying he had connections with the police. She agreed to text Ajianto when her boyfriend came home.

The man admitted he had sold the BlackBerry to a small shop for Rp 1.5 million *US$150*. "I forced him to give me my BlackBerry back. I didn't care where the money came from, but finally he made it happen. He bought the cell phone back and gave it to me," Ajianto said.

While Ajianto decided to catch the thief himself, another Jakartan resorted to using the services of a psychic to find his stolen motorcycle. Both, however, had the same instinct: The police would do nothing.

Rotari, a 32-year-old civil servant, told the Post recently about his dad, Subarkah, who once lost a Honda motorcycle. "I told him he should report it to the police, but he insisted it would be pointless," Rotari said.

Instead, Subarkah asked his friends for the name of a good psychic who could find lost objects.

"My dad didn't believe in the police. He said the police would just file a report but would not launch an investigation without getting a bribe."