In addition to writing code, Hadi Partovi should teach more people how to write suspenseful mysteries on Twitter.
The Seattle-area investor and entrepreneur, who is CEO of computer science education nonprofit Code.org, turned an unfortunate incident at an airport in California into a thriller of sorts this week as he detailed his attempts to locate lost belongings.
In a thread with more than 15 tweets, Partovi shared a “wild and unfinished” story that started with an Uber ride Thursday at Hollywood Burbank Airport where he lost a backpack containing his laptop, passport and what he described as his “most valuable life possession.”
After setting his bag on the ground at the request of an Uber driver who promised to load it, Partovi arrived at his destination with no backpack.
His attempts to locate his stuff included returning to the airport, reviewing security camera footage with police, jogging on roads around the airport, searching by car, tracking the laptop via Apple’s Find My app, knocking on doors at a senior housing complex and more.
Along the way he discovered the bag had been run over, lodged in the wheel well and driven out of the airport by another ride-share car. The Find My app showed his MacBook was 10 miles away. The left and right earpieces of his AirPods were scattered on separate blocks.
But those tech items were not his primary concern.
Partovi described his lost life manifesto as “a personal bucket-list of who I am, who I want to be, and everything I hoped to accomplish in my life.” He said it “was a very old, folded, moldy piece of paper, and precious to me.”
Partovi was unable to locate his belongings at the housing development — the resident closest to the ping of the Find My app was not answering their door.
But Friday morning he received a message from the building manager who made contact with that person and had retrieved the laptop and “other personal belongings.” Partovi headed back to the development, only to end up with mixed results.
The laptop — which endured a dragging of untold distance via Uber — was undamaged, he said in a tweet Friday afternoon. And everything else was in the backpack. But not the manifesto, which was in a wallet that also contained some cash.
Partovi was still waiting Friday to see if the building manager could retrieve it as well.
“Not giving up,” he said in an email to GeekWire.
The saga did ultimately provide Partovi with a few valuable lessons, including plans to introduce more tech into his life. He tweeted that he’s going to use Apple’s AirTags to “track anything of value.”