On March 31, 2012, the IB Asia desk held our Strat Session. First part concluded in our office at 2
WSQ since two of our team members had a Saturday shift.
At around 12nn, we left for Rizal where the second part of
our activity will be conducted. We arrived at
Loreland Farm Resort a little
after 2pm. We were escorted to our room
by Rovie Rosaldo, the personnel who assisted us with the reservations. When we
got there, housekeeping personnel were still in the room fixing the beds,
bathroom etc. They said that the previous occupants of the room checked out
late so they didn’t have enough time to clean/arrange the room before we
arrived. It didn’t matter to us so we decided to go inside the room anyway and
choose which beds we will be sleeping on later that evening. We were relaxing
for a bit since we were advised by Rovie that the facilitator of the team
building activity will fetch us at around 3pm. A few minutes after 3pm, Rovie
arrived with Steve Villareal who she introduced to us as the one who will be
conducting the team building activity. We were then advised by Rovie to leave
all of our stuff (that is not waterproof) in the room since it is raining and
some activities will involve water. We obliged making sure that the windows are
properly locked as well as the door. We also closed the curtains to avoid
tempting passersby / anyone looking into the room.
The team building activity area was not near our room, we
had to go on a 300 steps steep stairs to reach the area. The activity took
around two and a half hours to finish. During the team building proper, all of
us were always together as seen in the video shot by Patricia’s driver who was
also always with us.
Right after the activity, we proceeded to hike back up the
stairs. My manager was the first one in since most of us didn’t want to enter the room
yet since we left the air conditioning on and we are all wet and cold. He then
proceeded to shower. A teammate went inside as well to get Robert’s
wallet since he had to buy a new pair of slippers since he broke his during the
activity. When they went to the store, they realized that there was no money
inside the wallet. Both went back to the room to check. It was at this point
that Robert found out that aside from his money his iPhone4s and DSLR camera
were missing. At this point all of us checked our belongings. A team member also lost
money and my manager discovered that he lost his mobile phone and some cash as well.
Patricia reported the incident to the Loreland personnel,
and after some time some personnel arrived to check with us as to what happened. We
had to ask them to call the police for us as well to investigate. We believe it
to be an inside job since the door was still locked when we arrived and all of
our stuff are still in order. When the police officers were there, they never
bothered to enter our room and just asked questions from the outside. It was at
this time when my manager found out that his watch was also missing. Myself and another member of the team
also discovered that our wrist watches were also missing.
We had to stay in the room from around 6pm to 9pm waiting
for someone who has the authority from the resort to take action. We decided
that we won’t be spending the night at this place so we packed up our things
and left the room. We then proceeded to the admin office where the
General Manager (Ryan Marinas) was supposed to talk to us. He then arrived
together with two other personnel to talk to us. Bear in mind that we still
haven’t eaten at this point and we had to ask them to bring us something to
eat. The discussion ended with Loreland not taking ownership of what happened
but instead mentioned that they will be conducting an investigation. This is
after the GM mentioned that he can assure us that his personnel were not
involved in this incident. He even mentioned that we should have declared our
belongings or left them inside their safety deposit box at the admin office. We
mentioned that we were advised by Rovie to leave our things in the room and we
were never advised to declare anything nor leave our valuables inside a safety
deposit box.
As of this writing Loreland had said that they have
submitted their findings to the police and their next action will be based on
the result of the investigation of the police.
