It was 9 p.m. in Downtown Bellevue and I was scouring parking stalls with one of Bellevue’s finest, searching for a grey sedan that a 68-year-old resident had reportedly driven to an optometrist appointment, parked and then was unable to locate afterwards.

It was not exactly how I had expected my police ride-along would go.

Maybe it’s my line of work. In my year working for the Reporter, I’ve covered a huge sex-trafficking bust, the sad death of a toddler in a traffic accident and at least two hit-and-runs that killed mothers of young children. At the very least, I was hoping to see some of the kooky crimes that I write about each week in the police blotter.

Don’t get me wrong — I wasn’t expecting (or looking for) a gun standoff. There’s more that goes into policing a community like Bellevue. Though my examples might make it seem otherwise, violent crime isn’t that high in the city. Detectives investigate one, maybe two homicides a year. The big threats, according to police, are burglaries, financial crimes and plain-old theft.

But Bellevue is facing new challenges. Drugs are certainly making an appearance in patrol officers’ work and citizens’ lives. I watched as the officer I was shadowing discretely but directly spoke to a supermarket manager about a man using drugs in the store’s bathroom, and wondered if I have ever unknowingly been present during a similar situation. Good police work, I guess, often goes unnoticed.

Driving around the roughly 20 blocks that make up the Downtown Bellevue sector my officer covers, the city seemed incredibly small to me.

Just as the night seemed to be winding down, we got a call and took off towards a suspect fleeing from Bellevue Square after stealing a pair of jeans. Yes, a pair of jeans. And despite having been chased by loss prevention and being seen trying to ditch the stolen goods, he put up a hell of a fight, first seeming to motion to his waistband when he was cornered and ordered to get down on the ground, then resisting being handcuffed and put in the police cruiser and finally yelling insults at the officers.

That didn’t distract officers from finding the $10,000 warrant out for his arrest.

That’s police work: there’s highs and there’s lows. There’s chasing perps and then there’s helping residents find their misplaced cars.

I still have no idea if the police were able to find that poor man’s car, but I learned at least one thing: annual eye exams are really important.