I was just caught the other day at an Apple store stealing a $34.99 ipod nano case. The loss prevention officer took me into the back and wrote me up and everything, smirking in the process. I was extremely cooperative and didn't try anything rebellious, I know what I did was wrong. He brought in some police later on and the police officer was joking the whole way through writing me my citation, which kind of ticked me off. He gave me a misdemeanor (not an infraction, which I was hoping for). They didn't arrest me or anything, just gave me a citation (488 PC theft to be exact) stating that I need to go get booked at the local police station and then he assigned me a court date (which seems sort of random, how can he just assign me a court date out of nowhere?). This is my first offense by the way, and I have no tickets or accidents (that were my fault) on my record.
After perusing these forums and searching through google, i read that stealing something below $50 can be counted as an infraction. Is going to court (and by the decision of the judge) the only way for me to drop it down to an infraction? and an infraction is correctable, right?
To make a bad situation even worse, I leave for college in LA this weekend, so it's a huge hassle for me to come back, get booked, and go to court. The police officer that wrote me up also said that I should stop by the station NEXT week to get booked because the citation won't be in the system yet, but I won't be here. I stopped by the police station today to see if I could get booked now, but it's a holiday (????????) and the fingerprinting department wasn't open. Supposedly, I can come back the day before my court date (which is thursday may 3rd) and get it done, but the fingerprinting dept is closed on wednesdays... so I would have to come back on Tuesday. That basically means I'd be skipping two whole days of school, which is a lot.
I also don't want my parents to find out, but the address that they wrote down was my home address here in northern california. I want to change it to my college address in southern california, is this hard to do? What kind of mail do they send? My parents already have enough on their plate.
Just to put my theft in perspective (I'm sure many of you may scoff at this; yes i know any sort of theft is illegal but we are all human and we all make mistakes at some point in our lives). My dad just lost his job about 4-5 months ago, and this happened once when I was younger and it hit me pretty hard. I felt bad every time I spent money on anything other than... food. But my dad normally makes quite a large sum of money so our family is used to living a fairly comfortable lifestyle. But just like when I was younger, I don't feel like spending money on things such as an ipod nano case is a wise investment. My education is probably the only thing I want my parents spending money on. That's why I started occasionally taking things without paying. Getting caught, however, was not worth it AT ALL. I feel like I have to rebuild my entire future. I realize now how dumb of a decision it was and I replay the scene constantly in my head, wondering how my life would be right now if I just decided to not take it.
So basically my questions are:
1) How can I lower my charge to an infraction so I can correct it and erase it from my record? (reminder: this is my first offense)
2) How can I change my address so that my parents don't find out?
3) Will I need to hire a lawyer? (I'd prefer not to... as they seem to charge a sizeable fee)
4) What are public defenders?
5) Can I get booked at any police station?
6) Can I change my court date to either a later date in the summer, so I am back in northern california, or can I change the location to LA?

