After resigning himself to living the rest of his life never knowing how an In-N-Out burger appeared along Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica earlier this week, Lincoln Boehm, the burger sleuth of Queens, had a massive breakthrough.
In an article he penned on Vice, Boehm details the investigation he performed after a 16-year-old high school student from Flushing sent him a direct message claiming she had brought the incongruous, yet impeccably wrapped burger to Queens on a 5 a.m. flight from San Diego, California.
Armed with a heavy dose of skepticism, Boehm meticulously pieced together the story of how Helen Vivas, teen badminton player and AP student at the Veritas Academy, ended up transporting a burger over 2,500 miles in pristine condition.
After intuiting that Vivas’ was sincere, Boehm executed a rigorous inquiry into her travel route. He looked up the details of her JetBlue flight, demanded her burger receipts, asked about her method of carrying the burgers on the plane and learned the tragic accident that led a single burger to tumble onto Sutphin Boulevard.
He even asked for her height to verify the consistency of the position the burger landed in.
His sleuthing complete, Boehm invited Vivas and her family over for a barbecue to celebrate his victory for the truth. “We’ll probably have hot dogs and chicken,” Boehm wrote.
For fans of the saga who want to commemorate the great mystery, Boehm printed a batch of shirts, with all proceeds going to New York City Food Bank. To order a shirt, visit ja-m-aica-queens.myshopify.com/.
