Guilty

Towards the beginning of the year, my sister, Andrea, and brother-in-law, Andrew, bought the Utah Pass of All Passes. These passes can be used at Trafalga (mini-golf, arcade, etc), Orem Owlz Baseball Games, some other sporting events, and Seven Peaks Water Park. Soon after they bought the passes, my smart brother-in-law got offered an internship in Chicago. Since they didn't want the passes they just bought to go to waste, they handed them off to Darrell and I.

Darrell and I had a fun summer--going mini golfing, to baseball games, and our favorite--playing on all the slides and lazy river at Seven Peaks.

Towards the end of summer, Darrell and I made a trip to Seven Peaks. Unfortunately, on this day, they were checking passes closer than normal. (They do have a tiny picture of the person on them... I look enough like my sister that I wasn't worried, but Andrew and Darrell don't have a striking resemblance). The security guard noticed that this was not Darrell. Upon asking him, Darrell admitted it was not him. However, this was not good enough for the I-think-I'm-better-than-you-because-I-have-a-uniform-and-gun (yes, a big gun at a waterpark) security guard. He took Darrell off into another room while I sat on a bench waiting for him.

A few minutes later, the same security guard came up to me and said, "Are you Kimberly?" "Yes." "Can I see the pass you used to get into the park today?" Needless to say, he was smart enough to put together that Kimberly and Andrea are not the same name.

As we were walking to the room that Darrell had already been hauled off into, he gave me a little speech about how using someone else's identity is a serious crime and that we were going to get a ticket for breaking the law. I asked him how much it was going to cost and he said, "I don't know, the judge will decide that when you go to court." "Wait, we have to go to court for this?!"

When I got to the room that Darrell was sitting in, he announced that he had notified the Provo Police and that they were on their way. 

When the police arrived, he asked us to explain why he was there. We explained that they had bought the passes and moved out of state, so we were using the passes. You could tell the police officer thought that it was so dumb and asked if there was a fee we could pay to switch the pass over because it was a family members, but the meanie security guard was in the background explaining that the company policy was that we gotten written up for "theft of services" and "trespassing." Luckily, the police officer was nice and said he was going to only write us up for one. He went on to say, "I'm not really supposed to give legal advice, but you two don't appear to be the type to usually get in trouble, so...." He was very nice and kind of explained what we should do when we went to court...

Darrell and I both laughed about it (even though I was actually nervous--I have never even been pulled over before)! I honestly never in my wildest dreams imagined that this is what would happen if they noticed we were using their passes. We didn't ever really feel bad about it because the passes were paid for, we didn't steal them, and we weren't sharing them.

Darrell and I started noticing a lot more mail in our mail box--all from lawyers wanting to represent us. This one was my favorite, telling me I had been charged with a serious crime and that I needed them to get my freedom back. Who would honestly hire these people?

Our original court date was scheduled for September, but we later got a letter in the mail pushing it back to October. When we went to court, we waited for an hour and a half before standing before the judge. He asked us like one question and told us we needed to come back in November and talk to the prosecutor. Oh, and that we needed to get finger printed before we came back.

. 

 (Don't mind the mess in the background..)

When we got to the court, we met with the prosecutor in a little room. When we told her our names, she said, "Oh, you guys are the 7 Peakers." She asked if we had learned our lesson. We said yes and she said the best she could offer us was a Plea in Abeyance, which is what we were hoping for. We were both fined $150 and told that we can have it taken off our record in 6 months. Hallelujah. Looking back, I wish we would have fought a little more and explained in detail to her what happened (Darrell said he is happy with how it went), but we were both expecting the fine to be higher, so we just took it. Either way, I'm just happy that it is over with and we don't have to think about it anymore. (And crossing our fingers that the people who decide on acceptance into graduate school for Darrell will think it is as silly as everyone else we've told.)