I always knew that a geek would make a great husband

When her laptop was stolen, Kimberly feared for its contents, including books and screenplays she'd been working on.

But husband James came to the rescue and monitored the alien-seeking SETI network of any sign of the laptop.

Sure enough, the machine made an appearance three times within a week as curious thieves fired it up.

Melin logged the IP addresses of the sightings and passed the details to the Minneapolis Police Department.

The plod persuaded a local ISP to cough up names and addresses with a subpeona, and swooped to retrieve the computer. No-one was arrested in the raid, however.

Overjoyed to have her PC back, Kimberly sang the praises of her switched on hubby. She told AP reporter Rachel Konrad: "I always knew that a geek would make a great husband."

The proud spouse found all her writings intact. "He always backed up all my data, but this topped it all. It became like 'Mission: Impossible' for him, looking for hard evidence for the cops to use. ... He's a genius - my hero."

SETI folk were reportedly overjoyed that after millions of man-hours of searching, they actually found something. µ