Camry
About 15 years ago we had a big party at the house for Jenya's birthday. The final stragglers left around 3am. The next morning Jenya and I woke up on the late side and decided to get some brunch. But her Toyota Camry was missing. Did we just forget and park it down the street? Nope. It was stolen during the night. Shit.
Once this sunk in we filed a police report and that was pretty much all we could do about it. Jenya had a gig that night and I rode a bicycle to a nearby U-haul to rent a pickup truck so she could get all her drums to/from the venue.
A couple days later we got a call from our friend, Wes, who just so happened to notice our car parked elsewhere in Oakland (easily identifiable due to its obscure rock band bumper stickers). I was at work, so Jenya went to check it out herself. The battery was dead and ignition completely destroyed.
Neither of us had cell phones, so she had to call AAA from a pay phone several blocks away from the car. She also called me to ask that I notify the police to let them know we found the car. I got through to the police and they did nothing but instill in me panic that if a cop sees Jenya with the car (as she waited for the tow) she might be in danger of being deemed the thief. I asked, "what are we supposed to do about that?" And the reply was, "just call her and tell her to not wait by the car until we're sure it's clear in the system." As if everybody has cell phones of course.
Infuriated and freaked out, I left work and sped over to meet Jenya. She was fine, and I took over waiting for the tow truck as she had other things on her schedule. While killing time for an hour I inspected the damage inside. Lots of junk food wrappers, the stench of cigarettes, and the face plate from the stereo gone. It looked like several people had a fun little joy ride.
The car was fixed in a few days and back in our possession. Jenya managed to get a new face plate for the stereo. We snapped it on an immediately music blasted from the speakers. But the radio wasn't selected. We quickly realized that there was a CD in the player this whole time, left by the thief. I hit eject and out popped a CD-R on which was scribbled, "Dominic's Mix." Nice one, Dominic.
A week later I got a letter in the mail - a ticket for going through the FasTrak lane at the toll booth on the Carquinez Bridge without having said FasTrak. Hunh? Then I noticed the date. It was the night of Jenya's birthday. At 2am.
So, let's step back a second and put all the pieces together: Dominic (and friends?) stole our car from right in front of our house during our party from which people were still coming and going every few minutes. They then hauled ass all the way to Vallejo and beyond while enjoying Dominic's mix, eventually to return and abandon it elsewhere back in Oakland. Anyway, I was able to get the ticket voided due to the police report saying the car was not in our possession at the time.
But that was that, until several months later. Jenya went to hang with our friend Lara a few blocks away when I got a call from her saying, "I think the car got stolen again." She was only in Lara's house for like 30 minutes and it disappeared. Jeez!
I was prepared to go meet her over there when she called back again right away with more news. Turns out the cops already found it. In Emeryville. Wrapped around a tree.
Jenya got the full story from the police when she went to the scene of the accident. Oakland police respond to a stolen car with, at best, a shrug. But since this all went down in Emeryville, seven cop cars awaited Jenya's arrival. Four kids stole our vehicle and then very quickly picked up speed, lost control, and crashed right into that tree. Despite the gravity of the impact, they all ran away. Except for one kid, who ran back because he left his cell phone inside the car. The cops nabbed him, and then arrests (and I'm guessing trips to the hospital) were made.
Of course, it's our car, so it was now up to us to deal with its remains. Being early evening we decided to just have it towed to the front of our house and we'll figure it out in the morning.
Jenya and the tow truck appeared an hour later and this was the first I saw of it. The front was completely smashed up. Tree branches were embedded inside the engine. I looked inside and found the steering wheel completely folded over - whoever slammed into that had to be in pretty bad shape. But whatever sympathy I had for them was lost when I noticed that - during the scant few seconds they possessed this car, they used a knife to carve up all the back seat cushions. So.. fuck 'em.
The next morning the neighbors were quite confused how our car got that way. It looked as if it suffered an attack by an Ent in the middle of the night. A tow truck came and carried the crumpled heap away. No more Camry.