Eliza Webb is a wife and mother in Seattle who discovered someone had broken into her car, stolen a few things and, inadvertently, left a cellphone. Webb called “Mom” on the phone and told the woman who answered that “I have your son’s phone and I’m missing some things out of my car and I think they might be two related items.” The mother was devastated. As it turns out, her son had one of his friends had been drinking and ended up breaking into several cars. When Webb and her husband showed up, she sat down with the teen culprit and made the boy a deal: if he helped them track down the other victims and returned what he stole, they wouldn’t call the police. The boy agreed, and the couple drove him around their neighborhood, apologizing. “I think bringing the police and courts into something like this can have long-term, devastating consequences for kids,” Webb told The Seattle Times. “I wanted to meet him, talk to his parents and see if there might be another way. I felt that if I could get him to own up to what he’d done and understand there were consequences, it could be a much better outcome” …
