Sirius XM Podcasts.
Hey, this is Dan here with another Sporkful reheat for you, and I am especially excited because this is one of my all-time favorite Sporkful episodes.
Top five for sure.
And this one is a little different.
It is a little silly.
It is a little weird.
It's a parody, a satire of the hit podcast Serial.
Remember, it was like the first viral podcast.
It sort of launched the true crime podcast genre, and...
I decided I wanted to do a parody of Serial in which we investigated a food-related true crime story.
And let me tell you, we found a doozy.
Now, this was back when I did the show at WNYC, when Anne Sanney produced the show with me.
You'll also hear her in this episode, and I think you're going to find it's a gripping tale.
As always, if you have a certain Sporkful episode you want us to reheat, drop me a line.
Tell me your first name, your location, what episode you want to hear, and why.
Shoot that to hello at sporkful.com.
Thanks and enjoy.
This is a Global Tell Link prepaid call from Heather Coleman.
Why not eat the whole sandwich?
And this was not about food whatsoever.
This was about sex.
It all accommodated with me going slightly insane.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
For the last month, I've spent every working day trying to figure out where a third of a sandwich went, one fall day in 2001.
Or...
If you want to get technical about it apparently I do where a third of a six-inch sub at a call center in Elkhart Indiana, went one fall day in 2001.
The search sometimes feels undignified on my part.
I've had to ask about teenagers' sex lives.
Where?
How often?
With whom?
Didn't have anything to do with the sandwich.
I was just curious.
Before I get into why I've been doing this, I just want to point out something I never really thought about before I started working on this story.
And that is, it's really hard to account for your meals, in a detailed way I mean.
What did you have for lunch last Wednesday?
Soup?
Salad?
Sandwich?
Was the bread soggy?
Are you sure?
The entire day, name every single thing you ate.
It's hard.
Here's the case I've been working on.
I totally remember the very first time that I noticed my food was missing, and that was a Schlotzky's personal pizza.
This is Heather Coleman.
Right off the bat, I want you to know that the story she's about to tell is a true story.
Seriously, it's a true story.
In the fall of 2001, she was working at a call center in Elkhart, Indiana.
She worked long shifts so she'd often buy a big meal for lunch, eat half and put the rest in the office fridge for dinner.
So my dinner shift comes up, I'm looking forward to this pizza, of all things.
I open it, and one slice is missing.
Just one.
Heather wrote it off.
Lots of people in the office ordered from Schlotzky's.
Maybe it was an honest mistake.
Turned out, it was just the beginning.
The six-inch sub, that's the one that nailed it.
It was pretty obvious when a six-inch sub that was definitely six inches...
When you open it up and there's only four inches left.
And I was just like, what the heck is going on?
What kind of sandwich was it?
I believe it was a club sandwich.
Yeah.
The mayo, the mustard, all the good stuff.
It had bacon on it?
It wouldn't be a proper sandwich if it didn't have bacon on it.
What about cheese?
Do you cheese on the club sandwich person or no cheese?
I am one of those people who do believe that cheese does make everything better.
That's a fact.
Inarguable.
Heather tried to fight back.
She left threatening notes.
It didn't help.
She hid her food behind the salad dressing.
The thief still found it.
She even put a sandwich in Tupperware and wrapped the whole container in duct tape.
The thief cut through the duct tape.
And each time, only to take a piece of the food, not the whole thing.
That's a part I can't figure out.
It's one of the things about this case that kind of bobs above the water for me.
Like a disturbing buoy. it's even hard to even talk about it today.
It hurts that much.
Sitting in my cubicle unwrapping it, thinking okay, you know like I totally outsmarted my food thief.
I am so genius.
So I open it, I look at it, same freaking thing.
One third gone.
And I just sat there looking at that ridiculous sandwich and I felt like a loser.
And did you eat the sandwich?
No, no.
I don't know what's wrong with you.
You don't eat that sandwich.
It was only touched by a knife.
It wasn't touched by a mouth.
But it wasn't cut perfectly.
So, you know, there were hands all over it.
My bread was manipulated and molested.
I couldn't eat that.
Heather went to a woman named Cheryl in HR and broke down crying in front of her.
Cheryl didn't seem all that concerned.
She put a note up on the office fridge reminding people not to eat other people's food, but it didn't help.
The thefts continued on and off for months.
Eventually, Heather stopped putting stuff in the fridge altogether.
She only ate non-perishable foods she could keep at her desk, things like canned beef stew.
Yeah, I know.
Brutal.
We spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Heather was being targeted, singled out.
She says she didn't know for sure whether there were others.
She does say there seemed to be better food in the fridge that wasn't getting stolen, things like homemade mac and cheese.
Heather casually asked other people around the office if their food had been taken, but nobody spoke up.
She says she didn't want to make a big deal of it.
It was her first real office job out of college.
She already felt like she stuck out because she's Asian in a very white town.
She didn't want to rock the boat.
But more than anything, she didn't speak up because she felt ashamed.
I couldn't even protect my own sandwich.
I mean, what type of person can't protect their own sandwich?
And I couldn't.
No matter what I did, I could not outsmart that thief.
You know, who do I go to?
There is no crisis hotline for office food thievery.
Food is so personal.
Like, for example, if someone used up like all my Kleenex or all my Post-its, I would just go get another one.
It would be no big deal.
But the touching of my food, I really felt violated.
And that's when I stopped eating.
And so the starvation, the violation, the anger, it all accommodated with me going slightly insane.
Really, really insane.
I wanted to put together a list of suspects.
And for that, I thought I needed to understand this food thief a little better.
I reached out to Baron Ambrosia, culinary ambassador to the Bronx and host of the cooking channel show The Culinary Adventures of Baron Ambrosia.
Baron himself is an admitted food thief.
In one episode of his show he ends up in a pull-up contest with rap legend Melly Mel after swiping two pies from a neighbor.
I filled him in on Heather's situation and asked him for his take on the culprit.
This is not a crime of hunger.
I was caught stealing a pie once, as you well know, but I took the whole pie and I ate the whole pie.
Never once would I take a portion of something.
You know, and the things that I would steal...
Most of the time would be outrageously delicious.
What you're telling me here, a sandwich.
What's it, a tuna sandwich?
A turkey club.
A turkey club.
Okay.
We know what a turkey club tastes like.
So you don't think that it's a crime of hunger.
It's not a crime of culinary curiosity.
It's not like I must try this amazing food.
So what do you think it is?
No, I mean, it's none of these things.
If you look at all the facts, this is mediocre food.
This person was very controlled.
This person was very methodical.
And this was not about food whatsoever.
This was about sex.
This is about food.
This person, what they're doing is literally like two steps above sniffing someone's chair.
This is not.
Oh, I want a little snack and I feel a sense of entitlement and I'm going to come in here and be the sandwich bully.
It's not that.
It's certainly fetishistic.
This is absolutely fetishistic.
From there, I went back to Heather to get her thoughts on potential suspects.
So in my head I was thinking like one or two of the guys that I knew there that were, you know, just out of college as well.
And they ate like pigs and ate a lot.
So I just assumed it was one of the dudes.
They would have eaten the whole thing.
I mean, even now, I cannot believe that somebody eats.
Why not eat the whole sandwich?
Right.
The whole thing just feels very calculating.
Yes, exactly.
I asked Heather, does Cheryl from HR fit the profile?
Should she be on the list of suspects?
The thing is, at the time, I totally didn't think so because Cheryl was really kind.
And the way her office was positioned.
She'd have to come down the stairs, which had been close to my desk, and so I would have spotted her.
So logic tells me it couldn't be Cheryl.
Well, let's not dismiss her quite so quickly.
We got to pad this story out a little bit longer, Heather.
So we have Cheryl, the HR woman.
Well, she does have opportunity.
Okay, right.
And she has some authority.
Yes, and she was dismissive of my complaint of my food violation.
Right, which is questionable.
We have the frat boys who are hungry and probably selfish.
Exactly.
Next possibility is Heather has gone insane and is stealing her own food and doesn't realize it.
Exactly.
Then is there anyone else?
Let's continue to look through suspects.
Is there, let's say, let's call him a Mr. McGuffin.
Well, there is a person that could be Mr. McGuffin.
Okay, who's that?
It was my direct supervisor at the time.
Heather says Mr. McGuffin was a middle-aged guy who was kind of bitter about his job.
Meanwhile, she's this kid right out of college who keeps getting promoted.
She's about to leapfrog him on the corporate ladder.
She says there was tension between them as a result.
That sounds to me like a motive.
And she says there were other clues.
The fact that His lunch was always after mine.
I was looking at people's lunch schedules for a while.
Being in a call center, every minute of your time is logged.
That's right.
There were call logs.
Mr. McGuffin made calls at 321 to Jen, 332 to Nisha, 342 to a dude named Phil, and 359 to Patrick.
There are three calls on the call log around this time that all ping towers near Kathy's apartment 607, 609 and 624.
The first two calls are for a little less than a minute.
The third call is the longest, 4 minutes, 15 seconds.
Are you following all this?
Then there's some stray things about Mr. McGuffin that, eh.
I don't know what they mean or if they mean much of anything, but I'm going to tell you about them in case.
Worst comes to worst, we fill another 20 seconds of the show.
Here goes.
Number one, when he was 12, Mr. McGuffin may or may not have lied to one of his teachers.
Number two, Mr. McGuffin sometimes goes streaking in the woods.
And number three, Mr. McGuffin's favorite food is red herring.
Coming up on The Sporkful.
I mean, it seems like, yeah, it could be done, but it seems far-fetched.
So I just wonder where her little perspective of reality is sometimes.
I lost it.
I had no way of holding back this like burrito anger I had running through my veins.
And now a delicious word from our sponsors.
Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat.
I'm Dan Pashman.
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How did I miss that?
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Super quick and easy.
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Now back to this week's reheat.
Okay, returning to true crime podcaster voice, let's get back into it.
Earlier in the show we raised the possibility that Heather had gone insane and was actually stealing food from herself.
Well, to be precise, she raised the possibility when she said quote it all culminated with me going slightly insane.
This topic comes up a lot when you talk to Heather.
So I talked to her friend Kelly.
Kelly says Heather is really nice, funny, sweet, a great person.
They didn't know each other back when all the food stealing was happening.
I asked Kelly if she had ever seen signs that Heather might be out of touch with reality.
Well, we both have dogs and I'm always feeding my dog treats and she's always putting her dog on a diet and telling me that her dog's chubby.
And my dog is cute.
And my dog is a little bit chubby, but hers is not as chubby.
So I just wonder where her little perspective of reality is sometimes.
So there's that.
For just a minute.
Let's put aside the question of whether it's psychologically possible.
Heather was stealing food from herself.
Let's look at whether it was physically possible.
Like, could she have pulled it off?
Heather says it took two minutes to get from her desk to the lunchroom.
Then she'd have to remove a sandwich, slice a piece off, put the rest back and get back to her desk.
That's not much time.
I don't think I could even do it.
If I go there and like CSI'd it, like sat at a desk, did a quick run-through, did it, I don't think I could have completed the act in that time frame.
Gauntlet so thrown, producer Anne Sanney and I gave it a shot.
All right, we're in a corner of the WNYC newsroom, the farthest possible point from the lunchroom.
Right.
And that's where Heather said she sat, the farthest possible spot.
Right, right.
And she said she worked with about 75 people.
There's about 75 people who work on this floor.
Yeah, I think that's a fair estimate.
So this is basically exactly the same.
Right.
You got the stopwatch?
I have the stopwatch.
Hit it.
All right, we're walking to the lunchroom.
Now, we've got to walk briskly, like we're in a rush.
But not too rushed.
Right, we don't want to attract attention.
Hey, Brooke.
Hey, Dan.
Nothing to see here.
Hey, Dubner.
Dan.
Is that Lakshmi Singh?
No, no.
Ooh, there's a shrimp sale at that crab crib.
Sometimes I think Anne isn't listening to me.
We got to the kitchen.
All right, 37 seconds.
Took out my half a sub, sliced off a piece, ate it, put the rest back.
Then I took it out again and ate some more because it was good.
Then I put it away again and raced back to where Heather would have sat.
Okay, Anne, how long?
All right, we are at 1 minute 59 seconds.
Huh.
I mean, it seems like, yeah, it could be done, but it seems far-fetched.
Here's what I take away from my conversation with Kelly and the test Anne and I ran.
I don't think Heather's insane.
I just don't.
I think her reaction to all this is pretty understandable.
I've heard and seen her demonstrate normal human emotion towards me, like when she talks about the pain of losing all those sandwiches.
But in all the other options, it's a toss-up.
Could she have just accidentally misplaced her food over and over again?
It's possible.
Could she have made up the whole story just to get on this podcast?
It's possible.
Could all of human existence actually just be a dream in the mind of a giant space turtle?
I asked my magic eight ball, and the answer was, ask again later.
Back at the call center, Heather was keeping her head down and avoiding the communal fridge.
Weeks went by.
She hadn't moved on.
She was trying to stay focused on her work.
Then came the burrito.
She got promoted again, and a group of supervisors took her out for lunch to celebrate.
They went to a place with really big, amazing burritos.
Heather ate half of hers and got the rest wrapped up.
She put it in the office fridge.
Before she went home for the day, she went to grab it.
It was a travesty.
The wrapper was just torn open.
The burrito itself was mangled.
And I'm saying mangled as in like a rabid dog went through it.
Worst of all for Heather, only the chicken had been removed.
The rest was left laying there, splayed open like a carcass on the savannah.
I haven't felt that kind of anger since, like the Cubs didn't go to the series because that ball was caught by the fan.
That's the type of anger I felt.
But you know something?
That burrito was the reason that I found out who it was.
Well, I was looking at the container that had the burrito, and within the burrito was a spork.
So you see the spork that wasn't there before.
Right.
What's your first thought?
My first thought was lipstick.
There was lipstick on the spork.
Yeah, it was neon orange.
It was a very... unique color.
I knew right away.
I mean, it was just like a light bulb went off in my head and all I saw was red.
I mean, the anger.
And the worst part is like, I had no run-ins with this person.
I really had no idea.
Like, I couldn't tell you anything about this person besides that they wore that lipstick.
We'll call this woman Karen.
That's not a real name.
Heather says they hardly knew each other.
They didn't work closely together.
Outside of the neon orange lipstick, Karen was totally unremarkable.
She blended in, although maybe that was part of her cover.
And so I'm holding the box with the burrito in it, and the spork is in my hand.
And, like, out of nowhere, I see Karen walk by.
And she's going towards the restroom.
And I just, I lost it.
Heather followed Karen into the bathroom, burrito and spork in hand.
Karen was in a stall.
I started banging on the door and just like, I need to talk to you.
And I remember like a voice very calm saying, can we talk some other time?
And I was like, what the hell?
Another time?
No, this is the time.
This is the place.
We're doing this right now.
Heather stood there waiting with her burrito for what felt like an eternity.
I'm going to get the truth out of her.
She's going to admit that she's my burrito thief.
She's going to admit all the atrocities that she's done to all my food.
And that's all I was thinking.
And I just remember sitting there staring at that stalled door like, why won't she come out?
Like, hurry up.
And that's when I heard like the crumbling sound, the crunching sound of food wrapper in the stall.
She was eating in there.
Wow.
Yeah.
And that kind of for a second like broke my crazy seeing red anger because like.
What the hell, you know?
And she finally did come out of the bathroom stall, and there was food on her shirt.
Like, she was, like, brushing off crumbs on her shirt.
And, well, I kept on saying, like, why?
You know, why me?
And I remember saying, why me?
And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, that is so, you know, ridiculous and pitiful to say that.
But that's how I felt.
And she just went to the sink, washed her hands, and she turned around and looked at me.
And she just very calmly said a person who doesn't finish a personal pizza doesn't deserve to have that pizza.
Chills, still to this day.
For many, many minutes.
We tried to contact Karen to tell her we were doing this story and in hopes that she might want to talk to us.
In my 20-plus days of reporting, I've never tried harder to find anyone.
Phone calls, social media letters in English and Korean, even though I don't think Karen speaks Korean.
Two private detectives, people knocking on doors in three different states.
I even wrote her a note by cutting out words from magazines and taping them to a piece of paper to form sentences, then signing it in blood.
You know, all the tricks you learn in journalism school.
We never heard back from her.
My best guess is that she wants no part of this, which I respect.
As for Heather, she hasn't trusted a communal fridge since.
She never reported Karen to HR.
They never spoke again.
It was like my private secret torture that I kept to myself.
I was shameful.
I didn't want other people to know.
But in a way it was almost – perhaps it might have also been like her torture for her, because it's like now she has this sort of – this guillotine over her head.
Like she knows that you have this incriminating information on her that you're holding on to and holding on to.
You know, I never thought about it that way.
I was so self-absorbed at the time.
I was just thinking about me, me, me, like –
You know, how am I going to handle this?
You know, what am I thinking about this?
You know, it's possible, Heather, that you had the best revenge by never doing anything.
Even to this day, you lie awake thinking about her saying, why?
Why?
But she could lie awake thinking about you.
What if she finds me on Facebook?
What if we end up working in the same company or in the same town?
And what if I see her on the street?
What if she reports it to my current boss?
Exactly, because I'm always holding the other shoe for her.
That's right.
All you got to do is drop it.
Mind blown.
Never thought about it that way.
But now, now I feel like, you know, I have the upper hand that I will drink her milkshake.
This episode was originally produced by Anne Sandy and me, with editorial help from Chris Bannern and Leetal Mollad.
The serial theme song was composed by Nick Thorburn.
This update was produced by Andres O'Hara and mixed by Jared O'Connell.
Our team also includes Emma Morgenstern, Johanna Mayer, and Tracy Samuelson.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher.
Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Eric Eddings.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Noni from New York City, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
This reheat was produced by...
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer And senior producer.
Our engineer is Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has...
All your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
Right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
