I recently attended a somewhat formal event with over a hundred other people from around Washington, D.C. It was a cold day, and the coat rack was a sea of formal, black, wool coats. Finding no unused hanger, I lay my sky blue, beat-up, 13-year-old North Face jacket on a chair. As I walked away, I joked with the friend I came with about how unlikely it would be that anyone would take my jacket, given all the better options available.

Talk about tempting fate. We were among the last to leave the event, and despite placing our jackets next to each other when we arrived, only my friend’s jacket remained. There weren’t many left, and all of them were black. I retraced my steps throughout the event space, and even though we hadn’t picked up our jackets during the event, I still checked in every room before starting to give up hope. I had kept my car keys in my jacket pocket with a tracking device attached, and the application on my phone confirmed the keys, and therefore the jacket, were out of range.