Guest Blog: The Case of the Stolen Truck by Bossy

Pictures from the broken ball joint tow

Sorry for the suspense, I was just so emotionally drained on Thursday after I typed that up for Mom.

So Wednesday afternoon, Gamer and I were at work and had just realized the truck had been stolen.

In order to file a stolen vehicle report in our city you have to file a written report.  Gamer and I were both at work and Taco had a ballgame so we didn't get home until nearly 8pm.  When the officer came out to take the report and we had another problem...

 Because Mom and Dad are awesome they financed the truck for us, so the registration and title was in their name.  Mom had signed over the title last month when we thought we had paid it off. (Credit Union had doubled some payments and we wouldn't really be done until October.)   But legally we couldn't file a report because the state didn't recognize us as the legal owners since we hadn't updated the registration.   Mom was a Sport's ballgame and wouldn't be home until 9pm.

I went over to Mom's house and got her "Bossy's truck" file.  I parked myself on her couch until they got home.  Somewhere in that 30 minutes the stress overwhelmed me and I started to cry.  A very concerned Baby Doll, Scout, and Curly kept coming by and whispering not to bother me.  At 8:45pm the doorbell rang, I struggled to compose myself while Dog Walker answered.  It was a female officer from our city.  She was looking for the owners of a black F150 found abandoned in another city.

I quickly tried to explain the situation and how they located my stolen truck before a police report had even been filed.  She had heard some of this over the radio earlier, so she worked with me to make sure I got the address and could get the vehicle towed.  The other city had confirmed it was in "non-drivable" condition.  Just after she left Mom and Dad came home.  At this point all the other little siblings knew the truck had been stolen.  Poor Sport was very upset by this news.  He just loves cars.

It was nearly 10pm by the time I had the address of where the truck was Dog Walker went with me and I was glad, it was not a nice part of town.  I was very relieved to see the truck still had tires and looked like a truck.  I did an inventory search while Dog Walker listened to music and looked tough.  Once again Roadside Assistance was on their way with a flatbed. They had taken the aftermarket cd player we had under the back seat, his Metallica CDs, all of Gamer's change, and most upsetting to him they found the keys to his bedcover and stole his fishing tackle.

While we were waiting for the tow truck, a car stopped in the road next to the truck.  I was in the truck and freaking out and Dog Walker was engrossed in his music in my van. Had the thieves come back to finish dismantling the truck?  The car turned into the driveway across from the truck.  A lady got out and started yelling at us for blocking her driveway.  I got out of the truck and immediately asked her if she had an idea how my truck got to the end of her driveway.  I quickly explained the truck had been stolen sometime last night and asked if she had seen anything.  She apologized for yelling and said she had called the police this morning when she went to work at 5:30am and it was there.  I thanked her for reporting it, told her the tow truck was on the way and we would be hanging around until they were there.

We finally got the truck home around midnight.  Gamer and I barely slept that night worrying the thieves would come back and take it again.  They still had a working chipped key.  Thursday Gamer stayed home from work to deal with the insurance and police report. We hadn't filed a report because the truck was recovered and they wanted us to file online in the morning.  (To make matters worse the city's computer system had gone down the day before and we didn't get the report in the system until 18 hours after it had been recovered.) The tow drive pointed out that they stole the catalytic converter and totaled the engine.  The mechanic has it safely in his shop, we won't know if they took anything else until he meets with the insurance adjuster after the holiday.  By the end of Thursday, there was no better way to finish the night than watching Burrito play baseball.