My Jeep was stolen!

Here’s the story for those who may have missed it:

The night before, I got home about 11:30pm. I’d gone over to a friend’s house to visit and have supper, and of course got caught up in helping with various projects he had. When I got home, I took the dog out, so I knew my Jeep was there as of about midnight.

The wife and I got up one morning (I think it was a Monday around 8:30am) and started going about our usual routine. For her, that includes walking the dog. She came back inside and asked me, “Did you park your Jeep somewhere else last night?”

Uh oh.

So I go look, and sure enough, it’s not where I left it. She went back out (I wasn’t finished getting dressed) and walked around the block to see if she could find it … no luck.

So I started the chains of phone calls. Police first, insurance next. Fun times.

I actually had a rental car on the way at about 11:30 and was going to finally get started with my day (the phone calls took quite a while) when I got a call from Commerce City PD saying they’d found my car. The officer was incredibly nice … he offered to wait there (within reason) so he could release the car to me rather than a tow company and an impound yard.

When I got there (another good friend from work was able to come pick me up and take me out there), I checked it out. I had a broken rear passenger window (how they got in) and a punched ignition. For those not familiar, that means they took out the whole ignition … it’s just not there. You turn it on and off with a big screwdriver. The biggest surprise, there was nothing missing (other than my dome light and a speaker cover, I thought … but the body shop found the dome light under the seats, so all that was missing was a speaker cover that could have fallen off when they were messing around with it). The second biggest surprise was I got a free rap cd (they left it in the car).

But it was driveable! I took it to the auto-body shop my insurance had agreed on and didn’t find anything else wrong with it while I was driving. Looks like they just needed a ride across town really badly.

In the mean-time, my rental was a Kia Soul. Not a fan. It’s a nice enough car, but it seems like they tried to put a lot of work into the fancy electonics and cool looking interior (it feels really big even though it’s a small car), but the ride was about as basic as it gets. Plus, I am simply not a rap hamster.