My husband gave me a Kindle at Christmas. I lost it in May. I left it in a hotel room in Puerto Rico. I had been reading in bed and must have tossed the sheets over it in the morning. When I called the hotel from the airport, the manager said the Kindle wasn't there. But it is, I said. On the bed! No, sorry, nothing.

During the flight, I pictured the hotel housekeeper at a pawnshop in San Juan counting her ill-gotten proceeds. But I was angrier at myself. How could I have done this again? I once left my purse in a phone booth at San Francisco airport. I rushed back. Gone. I left my late grandmother's engagement ring on a bathroom sink at Macy's. I rushed back. Gone. I left a new leather jacket on a coatrack in a restaurant. I rushed back. Gone. Umbrellas. Earrings. Scarves. Cell phone chargers. Shoes. Glasses. Medication. I have left pieces of my life in rental cars, airplanes, hotels, cafes and cabs.

For my birthday in September, my husband gave me an iPad to replace the Kindle. You know where this is going. A week later, I left it on a sidewalk next to a parking meter in San Francisco. (In my defense, I was distracted by fishing in my purse for a credit card.) I rushed back. Gone.

But this time was different. I drove home, opened my laptop and clicked on the security software I had installed three days earlier. Up popped a map of San Francisco. There was my iPad, represented by a dot, moving down the Embarcadero a few blocks from where I had left it. I began sending messages that instantaneously appeared on the iPad's screen.

"I can see you're on the Embarcadero," I wrote. "Please call me."

I typed in my name and number. Nothing. A few minutes later, I wrote: "Now I see you're almost to Harrison." Then: "I know where you are, and I know you have my iPad. If you don't call, I'll have to alert the police."

This went on for more than an hour. Then the iPad stopped moving. It was in a park near the waterfront. I sent a few more pointed messages. Then I went to bed. Whoever had my iPad was either homeless or had dumped it in the park. In any case, I wasn't going to see it again.

My cell phone rang the next morning at 7.

"Hi! I have your iPad. I wanted to call you last night, but I don't have a phone. But my friend Eddie is always at Peet's at the Ferry Building in the morning, so I came over here and this is his phone, so don't call back on it, because I don't know if I'll be with Eddie later."

He said his name was Lee. We arranged to meet at Peet's at 11 a.m. When I arrived, I saw a bearded man on a bench outside the coffeehouse with two duffel bags on the ground beside him. A second man stood next to him, watching expectantly. He looked to be in his 60s. His face was scrubbed, and there were fresh comb marks through his gray hair. He was holding my iPad.

"Lee?"

I shook his hand, then pressed five $20 bills into it. I thanked him profusely. He kept apologizing for not being able to call the night before but, he said, luckily he found Eddie, nodding toward the man on the bench. Lee told me he used to work in construction and had lived in Marin County above a bar whose name he couldn't recall.

"The Flatiron?"

His eyes lit up. "Yes!"

It was just 3 miles from my house.

I didn't ask how he had lost his job, his apartment and his family or how it came to be that everything he now owned could fit into a duffel bag. Instead, I found myself explaining that my iPad ended up at a meter near AT&T Park because I worked for the San Francisco Giants. Lee and Eddie wanted to know what I thought of rookie catcher Buster Posey and whether Pablo Sandoval was ever going to find his swing again. We talked for 20 minutes, ending with my promise to get them tickets to games next season. "Keep my number," I told Eddie.

I turned and waved as I walked away, iPad in my hand. Eddie and Lee waved back. I felt a flush of embarrassment for the threatening messages of the night before and for feeling angry and sorry for myself. I knew I was lucky. I had something left to lose.