Mine was stolen one night from the parking space in front of my boyfriend's house, where I was spending the weekend. In fact, we woke up about midnight when we heard some screeching around the corner at a high rate (which nobody does in the neighborhood as there is a dip there) and commented "well, somebody's in a big hurry..." Little did we know until next morning that it was probably MY car that was being driven away at a high speed.
Then started the real fun....the officer starts asking me a set of questions: "Did you arrange to have someone steal the car? Did you trade the car for drugs?" and so on. Excuse me? I'm going to have a 9-year-old low-mileage Toyota stolen when I could sell it easily for twice what the insurance company is going to pay me for it? Then he comes back in and asks accusingly, "Who is __________ and do you think he could have taken the car?" I told him I doubted it very seriously, as that was my late husband and he had been dead for four years (his name was still on the title). Then the insurance company starts in on the same schtick.
So, even more fun ensues. The car is recovered two days later only a few miles from my house, which is on the other side of town from my boyfriend's house. So it all starts up again....."Did you drive the car there and forget where you left it? Do you know who took it? Was is REALLY stolen from your boyfriend's house? Do you know the person whose house it was found in front of?" The car was in good shape, in fact it had been detailed - washed and waxed, completely cleaned inside (and believe me, it needed it). Unfortunately, everything that had been inside it (my winter coat, a portable car charger, $214 worth of library books that I was returning the next day, cash in the glove compartment and most of my service records, which had been in the trunk, my rosary, and heaven knows what else) is gone, gone, gone. A key is hanging in the ignition on a keychain with my late husband's name on it. I later figured out it must have been his key (he drove the car a lot) and was probably at the bottom of the console under a couple of years of the kind of debris that collects in consoles and I hadn't known it was there. Well, you can imagine, that brought on another round of accusations. I probably accidently left one of the doors unlocked and the perp tossed the car and found the key in the console.
Luckily, there is a CD left in the player that is definitely not mine and they manage to lift a fingerprint off it.
So, I get the car back, insurance won't pay for any of the items stolen from the car and I have to pay for the library books. Nine months later, I'm sitting in Yellowstone Park waiting for Old Faithful to go off and I get a call from the police saying they had the kid (15 years old) that stole my car. He had got caught stealing another one and his fingerprints matched the ones on the CD from my car.
A few months later, I attend his court hearing. He's there with his mother, she claims destitution and he is assigned a free lawyer. He is sentenced to probation, but he doesn't have to make any restitution to me (not that he could, but I would have liked them to say he had to...) and to add insult to injury, HIS MOTHER IS WEARING MY COAT. I went ballistic. It's not that I wanted it back, but the nerve! I'm told I can't do anything unless I can PROVE it's my coat. The Victims' Advocate tells me, "That's right....you've been robbed twice, by him AND the court."
I feel like I really was abused by the system. I know they have a lot of fraud and abuse, but really? I'm a middle-aged woman, a pillar of the community, financially sound and they think I'm going to go that that much trouble to have a 9-year-old Toyota Corolla stolen for profit?
