A couple of days ago, I was cleaning out the junk that had accumulated in a drawer in Lucy and Alice’s room. I found all sorts of things—orphaned game pieces, single doll shoes, fruit-leather wrappers.

And then I found something unexpected: the fancy little notebook I’d bought to use for planning a major writing project. It had been in my office, but disappeared, a loss I attributed it to my, uh, creative organizational skills.

“Hey!” I said. “Which one of you swiped this notebook?”

“Not me,” Child A said.

“Not me,” Child B said.

I opened the book. The first page had writing in it that read, “This is my new diary. I found it in Mom’s office. Love, [NAME REDACTED].”

That is what is known as a signed confession. It’s also incontrovertible evidence that [NAME REDACTED] is the worst thief in the world.

As her mother, I couldn’t be happier about this.

After I extracted $10 from her piggy bank as restitution, we talked about how she needs to consider a different career, one that does not require stealing or quiet sneaking. She has no skills in that area, in contrast to Colton Harris-Moore, the 19-year-old serial thief better known as the Barefoot Bandit.

The Barefoot Bandit had been on the run for two years before he was caught this week in the Bahamas. He’d sneaked out of a halfway house in a town not far from mine, where he’d been doing time for a variety of crimes.

His life of crime started when he was just a boy—his first theft conviction came when he was 12. But it wasn’t as though he’d lived an apple-pie life before then. His dad allegedly used drugs and went to jail when Colton was just a toddler. The neighbors called CPS and reported he was being abused and neglected.

He caused trouble and school, and reportedly told counselors his mom drank and broke his things. And if he ever had anything good, like the $300 bike his mom bought him for his birthday, people accused him of having stolen it.

“What does that do to a kid?” she told a reporter.

The Barefoot Bandit was only seven years old when he started living in the woods for days at a time.

In his years on the run, he became a folk hero. A couple of Facebook pages have about 90,000 fans between them, a number that’s sure to rise.

He stole cars. He stole boats. He stole airplanes. And he often did it without wearing shoes.

His life story is a movie waiting to happen, and already, his mother is being accused of “cashing in” by my local newspaper because she’s hired an entertainment lawyer. (Apparently, these reporters are unaware of the fact that lawyers do not pay the people who hire them.)

I’m not going to judge Colton’s parents, even though it sounds as though he had a terrible childhood.

Whatever the facts of his case, the fact of family life is that it can be a stunningly difficult job, even in the best of circumstances.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a good parent. Some things that will make you a worse parent—such as judgment-impairing drug and alcohol abuse—make you more likely to become a parent accidentally.

I don’t know if this is the case for Colton Harris-Moore, but his mom revealed a lot about herself when she said she was proud of him for stealing airplanes. That just isn’t something you’d say if you have it all together.

As cinematic as his life story sounds, the whole thing is a tragedy.

I do feel sorry for the people who had their cars, boats, and airplanes stolen. But I feel the worst for Colton Harris-Moore, who is being called “an adult felon” by police.

We may be adults in the eyes of the law at age 18. But I think about how much I’ve learned about life since I was 18, how much better I am at making decisions and managing my time, and I was a relatively good kid raised by great parents.

No one’s potential is sealed at that age. No one’s.

I think about the child he was at 7, living by himself in the woods. My youngest will be that age in about six months. The first thing she does when she wakes up each morning is to come find me and ask for a snuggle.

That’s what kids that age want: to feel safe and loved. To be thought the best of, not the worst. That’s what everyone wants, and it doesn’t change, no matter how old you are.

Colton Harris-Moore might have stolen a lot of things over the years. But he wasn’t violent. And he himself was robbed of the one thing every kid deserves: people who love them and believe in them, and who give them a gentle nudge back to the right path when they do something wrong—like swipe mom’s notebook.

It’s telling that when police arrested him earlier this week, he didn’t point the gun he was carrying at the cops. He pointed it at his own head. The cops talked him out of killing himself. Then they cuffed him, dressed him in a bulletproof vest, the put shackles around his ankles.

True to his nickname, he was barefoot when he was caught. Barefoot. Bare-soled. How he’s treated from now on will be a test of ours.