Dude, Where’s My Car?

Friday, March 4, 2011

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Dude, Where’s My Car?

By J’AMY PACHECO

I was just getting ready to pour myself a glass of wine at the end of a long day when the telephone rang. It was my husband asking me to pick him up at the train station from which he commutes every morning.

“Somebody took my car,” he said.

Being a loving, supportive wife, I responded by voicing the first thought that entered my mind.

“Are you sure you went to the right station?”

He was certain of where he parked his car that day. He’d spent almost an hour wandering the aisles of the station’s parking lot in the cold night, clicking the remote on his car and hoping to hear a responding “beep.”

He never did, but I was still unconvinced.

“Who would want to steal your car?” I asked. His car is a seven-year-old Saturn. It’s a cute little commuter car, but there is absolutely nothing special about it except, perhaps, the fact that in an accident several years ago, it stood resolutely against the force of the other car and needed only a new door.

He assured me his car was gone. So I put the glass away, sent my daughter’s Geometry tutor home, bundled up, and we headed out to retrieve my car-less husband.

He was shivering when I found him standing in the parking lot of a police station a few doors down from the train station. A nice officer came outside to finish taking a report that my husband had started by telephone.

As I continued to shake my head in disbelief that someone would steal my husband’s car in a lot full of newer model beauties, the officer explained that it’s actually pretty common. Apparently, thieves can fairly easily open and drive away with cars like my husband’s by using something called a “shaved key.”

Often, the officer explained, the thief just drives the car for a while to do whatever business requires them to have wheels, then dumps it. He expressed cautious optimism that we’d get it back in a few days, and took our cell phone numbers.

It’s been week now, and nobody has called. I’m beginning to fear our little silver Saturn is never going to pull into our driveway again.

As much as it creeps me out to think of a criminal driving our car, I kept thinking maybe it was just a desperate person who needed a ride to, say, the hospital in Modesto to see their dying grandmother. I hoped they’d just go where they needed to go, then put the car back where they found it. That, I thought, would even be kind of funny.

Now, I’m starting to worry that it’s not coming back. And that makes me mad.

If the car doesn’t come back, we’re going to have to replace it. Of course, we carry full coverage, but let’s face it—whatever insurance payment might be forthcoming isn’t going to come close to covering the cost of another car. And that means we’re going to have to start making car payments again.

That bugs me more than anything; more even than the thought of a stranger helping themselves to something that belongs to my family. More than the realization that unless they’re caught in the car, they will very likely get away with having committed a felony.

A police officer friend told me that if the car is found undamaged, we’ll just get it back. There won’t be any effort to fingerprint the car and track down the person or people who occupied it while it was missing. With so many crimes against people needing to be solved, crimes against property just aren’t that high a priority.

I get that. But I can’t help wondering what the number would be if you added up the cumulative cost to insurers, and to taxpayers like myself who have to put out a huge chunk of change to replace a stolen vehicle worth thousands of dollars. Heck, at today’s prices, just the full tank of gas they took should make car theft a crime worth solving.

I read that a car gets stolen somewhere in America every 26 seconds. It’s no wonder—as long as you don’t draw attention to yourself, you can probably get away with it. And if you get a different car every couple days, stay away from exotic and noteworthy vehicles and steal from different spots, you could probably keep it up for a very long time.

I’d rather have police looking for murderers than car thieves, so I guess that’s how it has to be. But if you see a silver Saturn with a scratch above its front passenger wheel, kindly send it home.

My husband—and my checkbook—will thank you.