SANTA CLARA — Maybe it was just a matter of time before the bumbling thief was caught.

After all, he’d left his blood and other DNA evidence at the offices of Roambee after breaking in during the early morning hours of May 30.

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San Jose police officer, motorist injured in suspected DUI crash But the thief’s speedy arrest was all but guaranteed the moment he absconded with 100 of the cutting-edge trackers the Santa Clara-based startup makes for companies that need to know exactly where their products are at any point in their journey from factory to consumer.

“There is no switch,” said Roambee’s vice president of products, Vidya Subramanian. “It’s always on and it always tells you, as long as it’s got a battery, where it is in the world.”

Within 48 hours, a suspect was in custody and $30,000 worth of Roambee’s property had been recovered.

The trackers also led to the recovery of other stolen items, including an album of old military photographs and newspaper clippings, and that in turn has sparked a conversation within the police department about how the technology might be further used to fight crime.

“It was a great investigation that involved cutting-edge technology from a company that was very cooperative and led us to the suspect,” said Santa Clara police Lt. Dan Moreno.

The early morning break-in at Roambee’s offices on the 3100 block of De La Cruz Boulevard was as unnerving to employees as it was bizarre, Subramanian said. The thief drank a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and used a napkin to soak up the blood from a cut. Both the bottle and napkin were left behind.

“Can you imagine?” Subramanian asked.

Hardware and laptop computers were clearly missing, but it wasn’t until 9 a.m. the following day the startup realized the thief also had taken 100 of its bright yellow trackers, known as Bees.

Bees are used worldwide by 150 companies, ranging from computer maker Lenovo to pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, said Subramanian, adding that what makes the trackers unique is their long battery life and ability to communicate their position within 10 meters.

Under normal circumstances, a Bee provides its location every hour, Subramanian said. But when something goes wrong, a “load recovery mode” bumps the frequency to every 60 seconds.

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With the mode active, police were able to pinpoint two clusters of trackers — one at a storage unit in Union City and another that was on the move from Oakland to Alameda. By the end of the day, officers had arrested a suspect and recovered stolen property belonging to Roambee and others.

Moreno said police are not identifying the suspect because they don’t want to jeopardize other ongoing investigations, but he was arrested on charges including burglary and possession of stolen property.

Subramanian said an officer told him the thief thought the trackers were cellphone chargers.

Related Articles May 24, 2017 Oroville holdup suspect given up by his own ankle monitor It wasn’t immediately clear who the album of old military photographs and news clippings belonged to, so officers conducted an internet search of names in one of the articles, Moreno said. They found a match in Saratoga, where a resident confirmed the album had been stolen from his business on Jan. 16 and provided surveillance video of the burglary.

“I was really happy to get it back,” said Jeff Tarter, whose father served in the Army after World War II. “This was stuff my dad had saved from his time when he was stationed in Germany. With him having passed away a couple of years ago, it was a great memento of his service.”

Subramanian praised police for their resourcefulness.

“How wonderful is it?” he said. “I can’t stop talking about it. Nobody would ever think of the police doing that. It’s far beyond ‘to serve and to protect.’ This is ‘to engage.'”

Subramanian also was pleased with the role Roambee played in not only recovering its property but that of others.

“I feel so good,” he said. “Being our third company, we’re not building it for revenue,” he said. “Revenue is a natural consequence. What happened (May 30) and (May 31), to me, makes everything I’ve done over the last three years in building this company worth it.”

Roambee and the police department aren’t done collaborating. The startup has been invited to make a presentation about possible crime fighting applications for its technology, such as catching bicycle thieves at Santa Clara University, Subramanian said.

“We’re here 2 miles from them, and we should empower them with the latest and greatest to help everybody,” he said. “That’s my learning through this and we’re going to do that.”