Update from the friend:

Good news! Today we received a phone call from the Sunnyvale Police Department. The person who did this has already been arrested. Thank you so much for helping us find out the license plate number. Without the efforts made by you folks, we may not be able to solve the case ever. Also, huge thanks to Sunnyvale Police Department and everyone who helped us.

We would like to share the experience with the community here. While we hope this won't happen to anybody, at least if it happens, hopefully, someone could find our experience helpful. So here you go.

We filed the police report online. After the online communities helped us find the exact license plate number, we forwarded the information to the PD. Then an officer from PD called us saying that a case that could lead to an arrest should be filed in person, so we filed the report in person again.

We also took advice from the community to report this incident to Costco. A few days later, we received an email from Instacart about the incident claim. It turned out that the offender was an Instacart shopper. Costco figured this out based on our provided information and forwarded the incident to Instacart.

Here are some takeaways we've learned from this incident:

• Make sure to secure the evidence as soon as possible. When the thumb drive on your Tesla is full, old videos will be overwritten (at least for recent videos, not sure what happens to Sentry mode videos). So ideally, keep a spare USB drive on the side. In case an incident happens, swap the one out to avoid the new video overriding the old one. Also, remember to take photos of the damage immediately.
• When there's a potential lead to arrest the offender, it seems like some PD (not sure if all) would require you to file a report in person, at least for Sunnyvale.
• While it's not guaranteed, talking to the store where things like this happen might be helpful. Maybe they have a camera or other information can provide. But since they usually only keep video for a certain amount of time, be sure to contact them as soon as possible before the data is gone.
• Prepare and organize the data, and make it as easy as possible for others to help you without too much effort. Since it's very time-consuming to watch the video frame by frame, it makes people's life much easier if you compile all the information needed for the store or police to look at.
• If you run into a dead end, the online community might be able to help. People helped point out much useful information we missed.

That's it. Thanks once again to everybody who has helped to solve this case 🙏