Driving With Kevin, A Series - The Stolen Lincoln
From between the ages of 16 and 40, Kevin has made almost all of his income driving. He's been a floral delivery driver, bus driver for a day care, delivery driver for a paper company, delivered dead bodies for two different mortuaries, been a repo man, and a tow truck driver. Since he retired from towing in 2011 he's been the children's Uber driver daily--where he's paid in silence or non-stop chatter, depending upon the mood of his daughters.
This is an on-going series where Kevin will share some of his *stories for posterity--and he's got some good ones! But just like Netflix, you never know when the next series will drop; could be years, but hopefully sooner.
*These stories are completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up.
I'm not sure of the date of this story, but it was early on in my towing/repo business when I still had my business partner - around 2001 to 2003.
We impounded a brand new Lincoln Continental, which was unusually nice for West Valley. I knew as soon as we towed it in, it would need added protection so we parked extra (nonworking) vehicles around it. We left it secured over the weekend, only to show up Monday morning to find it had been stolen. The thieves broke into the office, found the keys and used our extra tow truck to drag the other vehicles out of the way. They took apart the fence and drove the Lincoln out of there. We called the police and reported the break-in and theft. The cops offered us very little reassurance of its return and I couldn't fathom how expensive this was going to be for us and our insurance.
Several days later I was driving down the street on a tow and happened to look over to see a teenager washing the Lincoln. As I mentioned, this car was unusual for West Valley and even more unusual for a teenager to be driving it. I pulled over and walked back towards the kid washing the car. When he left to get some change for the vacuum I leaned in and checked the VIN to make sure it was the car. It was! I raced back to my tow truck and called the police. I reported that I'd done their job for them and located my own stolen vehicle. I also said I had my tow truck and was going to get it back. Dispatch told me emphatically not to engage and to wait on the police to get there just as soon as they could. I'd heard this line before and knew it could take up to an hour before they showed up.
I told them I couldn't afford to wait. They strongly admonished me not to get involved. As we were talking, the kid got in the car and started to drive off. I couldn't take it and began my own pursuit; all the while dispatch repeatedly warned me not to engage. I followed anyway and tracked him to a nearby Jr. High school where he parked at the curb and walked inside. This was it, I was going in. Dispatch yelled at me saying they had an officer in the school that could handle it and threatened me not to involve myself any further. I reluctantly agreed but called my partner to come with his tow truck and block off one end of the street while I blocked the other. After what seemed like forever, but in reality was probably no more than a few minutes, a bunch of other cop cars came and eventually the youth was brought out in handcuffs and taken away. We had our car back!
The youth had gone to the school to show his girlfriends' mother his new car. There were a bunch of other stolen items from our office in the trunk that we were able to identify and recover as well. The kid went to jail with an accomplice he couldn't give up fast enough.
