by Al Greenwood
Senior Staff Writer
Most people call the sandman to put them to sleep. An insurance company called him to help find the site of a theft.
A group in Brazil had approximately $100,000 worth of computer monitors stolen after stopping at several points around the world, said April Lance, the spokeswoman for Matthews, Matson and Kelley Inc., the Houston-area Lloyd's of London agents and the insurance agency that's handling the case.
Though she declined to identify the client's name, Lance said, "(The monitors) were ultra VGA 14-inch color computer monitors."
The clients expected silicon chips. Instead, they just got silicon. When the packages arrived around Jan. 20, Lance said approximately 3,900 pounds of wet dirt filled the boxes, san(d)s monitors.
The insurance agency wanted a local geology expert to determine the sand's origin, Lance said, so they asked University of Houston geosciences Professor and local sandman Peter Copeland.
"They thought if we could do some geological analysis of the sand, that might give them a lead where they were stolen from," Copeland said.
Once the analysis pointed to the sand's source, the agency could determine liability and scoop up some dirt about the theft, Lance said.
Before reaching Brazil, the cosmopolitan grit may have visited Korea, Long Beach and Miami, Lance said.
"So far, I've determined the sand did not come from Florida," Copeland said. "With Florida sand, you'd expect to have 50 percent calcite." Calcite is a mineral found in limestone chalk and marble. The sample only had about two percent, he said.
Copeland will rely on mineral analysis to trace the sand. In one technique, he looks at a sand sample through a microscope.
To prepare the slide, Copeland polishes the sand to almost nothing. The grain would be so thin, he could shine a light through it and inspect the sand under a microscope.
When light passes through a mineral, it takes a unique path. Different minerals have different light paths. Copeland compares the light path of a known sample to the path of an unknown sample.
If the two samples differ significantly, the professor could argue they came from two different locations.
If the samples differ slightly, Copeland could use a chemical analysis and obtain a more detailed composition of the mineral.
He could then match the different samples' chemical compositions to their most likely sources. If the compositions differ, Copeland could rule out more locations as the unknown sample's most likely source.
With radioactive dating, Copeland said he could estimate the sample's age. Again, if the samples differ in age, they most likely come from different locations.
For example, "The rocks in Brazil are much older than the rocks in California," he said.
Although he has biology tests available, Copeland explained, "(the sand) has no shells." The biological analysis would not help if the sample has few fossils or lacks other signs that animals lived in the sand.
Not only did the suspects take the monitors, Copeland said, they probably didn't pay for the sand, either. If they bought the sand from a store, he said the grains would be fine.
Instead, the grains are coarse, said the "sandman." Besides, Copeland said, when he received the sample, "the sand was wet inside the bag."
The insurance company will send Copeland samples from Korea, Brazil and Long Beach, Lance said.
After he gets the samples, Copeland said, he will compare them with the client's sand. If they share similar properties, the sand most likely came from that area.
Although Copeland has done consulting for oil companies, he said this was the first time an insurance company approached him with a bag of wet sand.
The project may also be a first for Lloyd's of London. The agency is better known for insuring celebrities' body parts than for studying soggy spoil.
With any luck, the agency may recover the monitors before the thieves sell them and hit paydirt.