On a quiet shift somewhere in a Florida county dispatch center, a 911 operator picked up a call that did not fit the usual pattern. The person on the line was not reporting a crime or a medical emergency. He was lost in the woods and wanted someone to come find him. He also mentioned wild hogs nearby, which made the situation feel a little more urgent.

Deputies were dispatched to locate the caller. That part of the call went the way it was supposed to. What happened next did not.

When law enforcement reached the man and looked inside his backpack, they found electronics that had been reported stolen. Among those items was a GPS navigation device — the kind of tool that could have told him exactly where he was.

He had called 911 for directions while carrying stolen property that included a working GPS unit.

Why the Caller Asked Police for Help

According to reports from local Florida news outlets, the caller — identified as Andrew Joffe — had become disoriented while outdoors and could not find his way out. The concern about wild hogs was part of his reason for reaching out. Wild hogs are a documented presence in rural and semi-rural parts of Florida, and an encounter with them can be genuinely dangerous. From the caller’s perspective, contacting 911 may have seemed like the most direct solution to an immediate problem.

Deputies followed through. Locating a disoriented person outdoors falls within the scope of a welfare check, and the call was treated as a legitimate request for assistance. There was nothing in the initial call that indicated what was inside the backpack the man was carrying.

What Deputies Found in the Backpack

When deputies reached Joffe, they conducted a search of the items he had with him. Inside the backpack, they found multiple pieces of electronics. The property was identified as stolen.

The detail that drew the most attention in subsequent news coverage was the GPS unit. A GPS device is specifically designed to provide location data in real time — it tells the user where they are, where they have been, and how to get where they are going. Joffe had one. He had called 911 because he did not know where he was.

Whether the GPS was functional, whether it had a charged battery, or whether Joffe knew how to operate it was not confirmed in the available reports. What was confirmed is that the device was among the stolen items in his possession when deputies arrived to help him navigate his way out of the woods.

How the Property Was Connected to a Theft

Law enforcement was able to connect the electronics in the backpack to a prior theft report. The GPS unit and the other items were identified as stolen property, though the specific details of the original theft — including when it occurred, where it took place, and who reported it — were not fully detailed in the reports available from established news outlets covering the story.

What the record does confirm is that the property in Joffe’s possession at the time of his rescue contact with deputies had been reported stolen. That finding shifted the encounter from a welfare check to a criminal matter.

YOUTUBE EMBED — PRIMARY SEARCH QUERY: “Florida man stolen GPS calls 911 lost wild hogs report”

The Outstanding Warrant

The stolen property was not the only problem deputies uncovered. A records check on Joffe revealed that he had an outstanding warrant. The nature of the warrant — which jurisdiction issued it, what charge it stemmed from, and when it was filed — was not specified in the available reporting. However, the existence of the warrant meant that deputies had independent grounds for taking Joffe into custody, separate from the stolen electronics found in his backpack.

An open warrant means law enforcement is already authorized to arrest the individual named in it. Joffe’s 911 call brought deputies directly to him, which is how the warrant came to be acted on that day.

The Arrest and Reported Charges

Andrew Joffe was taken into custody following the encounter. Reported charges stemmed from the stolen property found in his backpack. The outstanding warrant was also addressed as part of the arrest process.

Florida news outlets covered the story in the days following the incident, with most coverage focused on the irony of the GPS being among the stolen items. The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office was among the agencies referenced in connection with the case, though readers should consult current public records for the complete charging and case disposition information, as those details were not uniformly confirmed across all available sources at the time of publication.

The story circulated widely in regional news and social media because the central contradiction was so clean: a person in possession of stolen navigation technology had to call emergency services because he could not find his way out of the woods.

The Documented Outcome

Joffe was located, helped out of the area where he was stranded, and arrested. The stolen electronics — including the GPS — were recovered. The outstanding warrant was resolved through the arrest. Deputies left the scene with both a recovered theft victim’s property and a subject in custody.

No dialogue from the 911 call has been independently published in verified transcript form, and this article does not reconstruct or invent any. The details above come from news coverage of the official account provided by law enforcement at the time.

What the record makes clear is straightforward: a man carrying a stolen GPS called 911 because he was lost in the Florida woods, and the call that was supposed to help him find his way out led instead to his arrest. The GPS went back to the evidence chain. The caller went to jail. And a 911 dispatcher somewhere handled what was probably an unusual end-of-shift story.