In college I had my car broken into, but since I was in college I had basically nothing of value to leave in my car. They stole the ~$3 of change out of my ash tray though…
Rolling Stones concert in Memphis, TN. They got my hubbie’s 8-track stereo radio and a couple 8-tracks. Totally missed the rifle and bottles of booze behind the seat. (quite a combination, what?) It was a pick-up truck so they probably didn’t think to look.
@JanaS Reminds me of one of my jobs. I worked at “Joe’s Jug” liquor store and gun shop. On any given Friday night I would sell Jack Daniels and firearms to enthusiastic patrons. Or, a 12 pack of PBR and couple boxes of 12 gauge shells. You know, beer, whiskey and guns are the cornerstone of any good weekend party.
When I lived in places where breakins were more of a concern, I had the uglymobile with a bunch of fast food wrappers tossed in the back seat. No one would bother. The car’s engine was worth more than the contents of the interior (aside from the rare time I left my macbook in the car while running errands), and my burnt CD collection (cause my shitty CD drive would just scratch them up anyway) wasn’t to anyone’s tastes. “Broadway mix 1”, “bubblegum pop”, “gothrock”, “Disney faves”, etc. circa 2006.
Yes, and it’s such a sickening feeling when you get the car back after the police find it and you drive it home knowing someone like that was in there. Yicks.
@elimanningface It was a Honda civic. Of course. Now I have a VW beetle that I assume is not on a most-commonly-stolen-cars list. And it’s a manual, which I hear is a good thing because so many thugs out there only know how to drive automatics…
/giphy can’t drive
@elimanningface@moonhat I read that as “killed in action” and my brain is off on this tangent where the cops killed the thief in your car and they give it back to you with blood all over the seats…
Umm so I have lived in some “neighborhoods”… this one the second worst neighborhood in Columbus OH (also lived in the worst one after that). Any way this house was owned by a drug dealer, attic lined with plastic to keep the rain out of the rest of the duplex (once a bird got its head stuck in one of the holes in the roof, we liberated it and it flew to the top of the abandoned and boarded up house next to us looking ring killed), backed up to an empty warehouse (where my landlord was later arrested for an indoor pot growing enterprise)…
So one snowy night I heard breaking glass (maybe 6pm and dark). A bit later a guy comes up on the porch. Thinking it is a housemate I get up to open the door. He runs off before I even get completely off the couch. Cops come, knock on the door and want to see the bottom of our feet (tracks in the snow from another house that had been broken into that led to our house). Nope not us. I nearly opened the door to the thief. Oops. Good thing I was home and in the living room as that saved us from being broken into too. Breaking glass turned out to be the window of my pickup truck which was parked on the street and everything inside it was stolen.
@Kidsandliz Reminds me of a friend’s story. He was in bed in his new (old) home one night when he heard someone break the glass, open his door, and start walking around downstairs. He got up and yelled something akin to ‘alright motherfuckers, I have a brand new Glock I’ve been dying to shoot someone with and I’m coming for you.’ He heard some quick footsteps and the door as the burglar took off. Turns out the previous owner of the home had just passed away and his info was posted in the obits. Apparently some thieves look at this stuff and will go to their homes figuring they’re now empty. There was no updated information for this guy so it was assumed he had still lived there.
@Kidsandliz Decades ago, I was awakened predawn when the Great Dane in my bed started barking like a crazy dog. I couldn’t get her to shut up so I put her in the garage. When I got up a couple of hours later, the doors to my car in the driveway were standing open but nothing was missing. I expect she hit that garage door like an angry grizzly bear and scared them away. Stupid of me, if they’d been breaking into the house I’d have locked away my first line of defense. A potentially expensive lesson cheaply learned.
Someone “broke in” (it was unlocked) my mom’s minivan and stole nothing. In fact, they left a North Face jacket and some bootleg Sugarhill Gang CDs. Oh, and an empty bottle of cheap hooch. Probably a drunk sleeping it off. Still, we locked the doors after that.
@cpierce Back in the late '70s my Mom had a Chevy Biscayne. We hadn’t had problems with the hippies in the park for a while and she didn’t always lock the car. But drunk bums were migating closer to our neighborhood. One morning she went out and found a couple of empty bottles, footwells full of vomit, and the back seat covered in diarrhea.
As I recall she got rid of the car. It had vinyl seats so it could have been cleaned up, but for her it was ruined. The bastard stole a lot from her even though nothing in the car went missing.
Right in the driveway. The thieves were identified but never charged because the police got them on more serious charges. Stinking tweakers, they stole a lot of stuff from a lot of people and got caught.
They stole a GPS unit, some tools from the glovebox, a military wool blanket and a poncho liner I keep in the back. I got some of it back, but not the GPS.
My uncle had a crappy old truck, barely running, but he loved it. Some dumb potheads decided this hunk o’ junk is exactly what they need for a joyride. End up rolling the truck and hitting a tree. Cops find them sitting on the side of the road, still laughing about it. Turns out, that uncle pays way too much on insurance as he had it listed as a collector vehicle or something, and so he ends up with way, way more than he’d have ever got if he’d tried to sell. I, meanwhile, was moving, and had a guy steal a box out of my car when I was parked at a gas station somewhere in Kansas. Thankfully, he picked the lock instead of busting glass. I’m still not sure what exactly I lost, but it clearly was that important.
I was borrowing my dad’s car for a few days, and for some reason I left my nice camera under the front seat while it was parked overnight in front of my place.
The thieves broke in (left no damage while entering…did I leave it unlocked?) stole the camera, stole the spare key in the glove box but didn’t steal the car! (Value of the car was waaay more than the camera?! Less portable, sure…but…no risk, no reward, punks!)
Dad and I puzzle over that one now and then. I still miss that camera and the undeveloped pix I’d taken earlier that day while I was up in Estes Park, CO. (This all happened in 1993, youngsters, back in the film era.)
Three times. Years ago. The first was when I was in college. They got a bunny pez dispenser and other contents from my glove compartment. Another time, after taking a short trip, we stopped at my aunt’s home to bring a gift we had bought for her. We opened the trunk that was filled with our bags, and took out the present. I had the feeling that we were being watched, and looked around. There was no one at all, and the street was quiet. I double checked the trunk, after my husband closed it, to make sure it was locked. When we got home we opened the trunk-- it was empty. Ironically, just before we left for the trip, we stopped to visit my mother-in-law. She gave my husband an old coin that she had come across. My husband’s grandfather had given it to her to save for my husband (a favorite grandchild), and he had put in a suitcase. The third was the week after we bought our new car. My husband parked it in the parking lot at work. Someone smashed the driver side window, but luckily someone saw him and yelled at him (he ran away). This time I think they wanted the car and not the contents. We no longer live in a big city.
I’ve got a driveway that I rent for my Jeep Wrangler TJ. This is an easy vehicle to break into. Like, if the soft top or half doors are on, unzip a window and you’re in. Even with a hardtop and full doors, any kid with a paperclip can pick the lock.
I had the hard top on (which is a two piece thing, where the front half comes off, but still easy enough to get into) and for some reason somebody tried to steal the front portion of the hard top. They gave up, cause I guess it was too hard/heavy to figure out how to steal it, but it was interesting waking up and ready to leave with a portion of the top out of place.
… No, but my mom [who always locked her car at night] was a victim of both a break in and a theft, twice in the same week… By the same thief…!! He got caught the first time, car was returned… made bail then repeated the crime… Funny thing is it wasn’t a high-end make/model and it was ten years old. Even the cops were puzzled.
I’ve had cars broken into in my driveway twice. But the best story was the one broken into in Rome. We were at the Vatican hearing the Pope say Mass, our rental car was parked near Ponte Sant’Angelo and Castel Sant’Angelo. We’d checked out of our hotel and were headed for Austria after our visit to the Vatican. All the way across Italy, we’d been warned about pickpockets and purse snatchers in Rome, so we left our valuables in the car on the floor concealed under a jacket. They broke the side window and took my jacket and my valise containing my passport, ID, the last of my travellers checks, the book I was reading and, greatest loss, five rolls of film from Ireland. It was meant to be, as that same morning I was stormed on the bridge by a flock of little kids who patted me down looking for something to steal, so if I’d been carrying the bag it would have been lost anyway. Acquiring a replacement passport was a very memorable adventure. This was before the EU, the Rome Embassy was closed for Labor Day, and we had to keep moving to make our flight home. I smiled my way through two border crossings with no passport, charmed my way into the Munich Embassy despite it being closed, and talked them into giving me a passport with no ID.
“Broken into” would implied that it was locked. I lived a block from the high school at the time, and in my tiny little town that was the “high crime” area. Someone snagged a discman and a leather jacket because I wasn’t in the habit of locking things up.
Honestly, I’m still not. I even leave the keys in the ignition 99% of the time. It’s just not a thing that happens much around here.
@dannybeans@sligett Nice. If you did that here your car would be in Mexico before you got into the checkout line. We have very little violent crime but lots of property crime. My only serious complaint about my Honda Civic is that you cannot lock it when the engine is running in neutral (it’s manual), so I can’t leave the A.C. on for my dogs when I make a stop. People say, “Nobody’s going to mess with a car with two 120lb dogs in it”, but anyone who knows dogs would easily discern that these guys are not guard dogs.
My locked '86 Firebird was in my condo parking lot. I got in to go to work and saw a bunch of black plastic pieces around the seat. I was a little perplexed as to what this was. Started looking around and saw a perfect handprint on the driver’s side window. Looked around some more and saw someone had tried breaking the ignition. Someone must have scared them away because obviously my car was still there. Nothing was stolen from inside because I never kept anything in the car.
I went to work and called the police when I got home. They interrogated me inside and told me to buy a jack for the steering wheel. One cop was checking out my condo - asking questions about it! Like I was her personal realtor, the fucking bitch. I was violated and they didn’t care. They never even looked at the car nor took the print!
@looseneck Those steering wheel clubs are useless. My grandfather had one, and they just cut the steering wheel and took it off before stealing his car.
Well, it wasn’t my car, but someone got into the rental car my folks and I were using on a trip to LA back in 2002. They stole my CDs and MP3 CD player. There was stuff on those CDs I didn’t recover for a decade.
Never had someone break into my car, BUT I have had my license plate stolen a few times. Truthfully the first time I was somewhat happy as my license plate was 6BJ BJ9. After that, it just became an annoyance.
**I’ve always opted for the randomization with my plates.
@theonlybuster Oh, I had a vanity plate stolen once. I no longer recall what it said, but as it was stolen, they wouldn’t replace it with the same one. I suspect it was taken by the guys from Sears who delivered and installed our new fridge.
@wmbarr umm yes. Multiple times. Kid kept locking my keys in there and I was stupid and never had spares with me. Minivan. Pry the side window open on the driver’s side where the window lock thing is and pop it so you can open the window (these are the vent style windows and not roll down). Use a long broom handle to reach and then push the lock on the passenger side sliding door. Less than 5 min, minimal scratches to the side window.
The year was 1995. The car a 1982 Datsun 200SX - which I pronounced “sux”. This case looked as good as it ran, and it was very consistent. Every 200 miles it would take 10 gallons of gas and a quart of oil. I had just gotten my first full-time job and was one day away from moving from my college town to the new job location. I never kept anything in the car except my double-sided 60-tape cassette case. It stayed in the car probably 90% of the time.
I’m not positive how they got into the car since I always kept it locked and there were no signs of entry (but who knows, with such a fine piece of craftsmanship like this car, they may have stuck their own key in the door lock and opened it and THEN realized it wasn’t their own car). Anyway I get out to the car and think “My tape case is gone. Weird. I don’t remember taking it inside…but I must have.”
83’ Nissan Sentra; Tucson, AZ.; 22nd and Craycroft; Thunderbird apartments. Walked out to the car one morning to go to work. The car was gone. Thought I parked it somewhere weird. Walked around the parking areas and finally saw it. They had broken in by pushing the window down in the track. The Sentra was known for window tracking issues. How did they know? Got in, released the brake, pushed it away from the lighted parking area. The car was worth maybe $500. The Blaupunkt stereo was worth more. They used a limb saw or something similar and cut a jagged hole in the dash around the stereo and took the stereo and the hunk of dash with them. I sure did miss that Blaupunkt stereo!
I once look left my car unlocked right outside my apartment, and someone bothered to steal a cheap audio cable. Nothing else, just this plastic male-to-male stereo cable. Must have been a child, is all I can think, to be into stealing a thing of that little value.
It had a short in it and I was already planning on throwing it away. Hah! Joke’s on you, ya damn kid.
Three times - twice the whole car was taken but recovered. Once stolen from behind work and once from behind my apartment. These were times 2 &3.
The first time was from the driveway at my parents home. Whoever broke in went through all the cassettes I had in the car, but didn’t take ALL of them. Just selected what he/she liked. Didn’t take anything else either, guess it was kids.
F***heads broke into my 1974 Plymouth Duster (busted out the side window). They couldn’t get the stereo out…believe you me, they tried! Must’ve used the crow bar they used to break the window! F’ed up the whole dashboard area around the stereo…Ended up taking two satellite speakers which were probably worth $40 on the high side! When I got up the next day and saw the damage, I noticed a large police presence across the street from me, so I walked over to talk to an officer. When I mentioned the offence, he told me they were investigating a murder! So I guess my small loss was nothing in comparison. Gave me quite the story to tell I guess…
@duodec It was actually a pretty cool car. I pulled the straight-6 out & brought it to a specialty machine shop and ended up with a big cam, 4 barrel carb & header exhaust. Looked cool & could keep up with any Camaro or Mustang on the street!
I wish I still had the car now!!
Some of these stories remind me of the car that wasn’t stolen, despite my best efforts. I like small stick shifts, but when I was still in my teens buying my second car, my mom talked me into buying this behemoth automatic. I hated that car, it was a gas guzzler, a PITA to park downtown where I worked, and most damning of all, was no fun at all to drive. I wanted out of it, but couldn’t sell it. It was fully insured so I started parking a few blocks from my office in a very bad neighborhood, leaving it unlocked with the keys on the seat in plain sight and still no one took the damned thing. Once I got it paid off I traded it in on my first Honda Civic and have driven nimble little stick shifts ever since.
My car as a feature where if you hold down the unlock button on the remote, the windows and sunroof open. Well, one day I did that accidentally in my pocket without noticing, while my car was parked on the street. Next day, I come out to my car completely soaked on the inside from an overnight storm, but otherwise fine - no one had stolen anything out of it overnight.
Though the repair shop still hasn’t returned the arm and leg I gave them.
Back in the 70’s, when you were lucky if your car was still intact in NYC, a neighbor tried to sell my car.
There was an abandoned car, the same model as mine, parked on the block. Eventually it was gone.
One day I’m looking out the window of my apt and see a tow truck hooking up to MY car. I go out and tell him it is mine. He says he just paid a woman in another apt building for it. I told him, but this isn’t abandoned, it has plates. She never showed you any ownership papers.
So he unhooks my car and goes to get his money back. She comes to the apt building door, with a young baby in her arms. It is a very cold winter day. The baby is not dressed for outside. She argues with the guy for about 5 or 10 minutes, the entire time standing in an open door with the tiny baby.
Eventually she gives the guy the money back.
When she moved we decided to check out her apt. There was a ring of dog urine around the wall. (she had a ground floor apt, that had a small back yard, so she could have put the dog on a chain and let it outside very easily). Everything was wrecked. The building was only 2 years old.
I guess the only reason she lived there was the super was a drug dealer. Easy to get your drugs. Not so easy to get anything fixed!
Someone broke into my '97 Lexus and stole my gym bag with my smelly/ mildew towel bathing suit and stuff I use while surfing. It still kinda felt like I got violated.
In the early 2000s my car was parked on the street in front of my girlfriend’s house in a wealthy neighborhood that is surrounded by really bad neighborhoods. It was near Christmas and my car was full of presents from shopping that day.
I heard a car pull up and set the emergency brake but not shut off. This struck me as odd so I got up to check out the window. I saw a giant of a man quietly lowering the hood of my car so I started to get dressed.
My girlfriend thought quicker than me and opened the upstairs window and yelled something like “they’re stealing, get the gun!” causing the guys to scatter. I went outside to my car open with one bag of presents dropped just outside the car and their old LTD taking off down the street. I had an alarm so the one guy pushed the window down in its track and popped the hood to disconnect the battery.
They had hit the neighborhood hard that night and when the police came they said they were basically busy taking all the calls, so I told them I’d like to go find the guys. They advised me not to but with a little bit of “but if you do, don’t engage them and call us if you find them” so I spent the next three hours patrolling both the good neighborhood and the bad ones around it with a Q beam and a Glock .40. Thankfully I didn’t find them, because at that age I hadn’t really thought that through fully. That night I must have seen a dozen places on the street where windows had been smashed and the cars were no longer there, so I was very lucky to get no damage and nothing missing.
the Year, 1999. Late May. Took some My Buddy Ryan, our friend Sara, and Ryan’s Little Sister(late elementry school age??) on a trip down to Columbus, OH, on a weeknight, to see “The Phantom Menace” in a good theater.(the ones we had here at that point were all from the pre-thx era and smelled like feet.)
we got there a bit early, went to the Old Navy around the corner in the same plaza as the Theater(Lennox Town Center, just off the OSU campus)
had been there many times before, had always been a safe neighborhood…
this Next part is absolutely True, not made up.
While i was trying on a pair of pants in the Old navy Dressing Room, I felt, what i can only describe as “a disturbance in the Force” a wave of unease came over me. but i shook it off, and went on with my day.
when we all get our shopping done, we head for the car to put the bags in the trunk before the movie starts.
Car is GONE. Some one Stole My 1987 Olds 98 in Old man Champagne Gold inside and out, with a matching vinyl top.
we go into the theater, (8pm)Tell them, “another one?” and they call the cops. (another car was stolen from that Lot at the same time, for a total of about 6-8 in the prev. week) this was also the time The Little sister tells us that she has School in the morning.( we thought her school year was already over)
now comes the FUN part…Calling My parents to come get us. (had my friends call their folks first, cuz I knew my dad would be FURIOUS, none of them were able to come…) We are 2 hrs from home, so 4 hr round trip for dad, it’s about 9:30p when i call him, and he arrives around midnight. ranting up a storm about having to be on the road for work at 5 am, working 100hrs a week, yadda yadda…
that was a fun 2hrs of angry dark silence on the way home…
we get back, around 2 am, dad storms off to bed( “I have to be up in 3 hrs”) and I drive everyone else home.
i get a Call a few days/a week later from the police that they’ve recovered my car, and tell me where to pick it up.
dad just happened to be home at the time, so he called in a personal day, we went down, paid the impound fees, had them start the car, and drove it home.
(they had Popped the Driver’s lock with a screwdriver, busted the Column open and started it with that same screwdriver, then stole my Stereo(but not the faceplate that was in the map pouch on the front of the driver’s Seat, and all my CD’s that were in the car…
like a pair of idiots Ryan and I had left our CD Binders out on the front seat…
Broke the window, stole only the radio face plate and left me a free steak knife. I even had an amp and sub in the trunk that wasn’t really bolted down at the time. Kind of a dick move even for a thief. If you can’t get the radio out, why bother taking the face plate? Neighbors said they heard my car alarm, but I sure didn’t. Maybe that spooked them.
Kids break into my cars get broken into all the time I live near Section 8 Housing and they always come up and steal change from my change holder… never anything else they could have stolen my iPod and phone and other stuff but they never touched it… one ass hat didn’t close the door and had dead battery in the morning!
Always lock my car in the driveway, but, long story, didn’t this night. Just change from the ash tray taken. Pretty sure it was my grandson. Another long story.
I had my car “broken” into (I kept it unlocked as I only had an ignition key at the time- crappy used car deal) while parked in a parking garage. They didn’t steal the car (which had my keys in it under a jacket) and likely got spooked and fled, leaving behind some items they had pilfered from other cars. I gained a first aid kit and umbrella out of the deal.
Missing option: No, my car’s obviously not worth the effort.
In college I had my car broken into, but since I was in college I had basically nothing of value to leave in my car. They stole the ~$3 of change out of my ash tray though…
@shawn_mitch and your innocence. Don’t forget they stole your innocence as well.
@elimanningface @shawn_mitch
/giphy remember the fallen
@shawn_mitch Similar situation - someone once through a cinder block through the window of my wife’s car to get the 72 cents out of the ash tray.
Rolling Stones concert in Memphis, TN. They got my hubbie’s 8-track stereo radio and a couple 8-tracks. Totally missed the rifle and bottles of booze behind the seat. (quite a combination, what?) It was a pick-up truck so they probably didn’t think to look.
@JanaS or maybe thieves have standards too.
@JanaS Reminds me of one of my jobs. I worked at “Joe’s Jug” liquor store and gun shop. On any given Friday night I would sell Jack Daniels and firearms to enthusiastic patrons. Or, a 12 pack of PBR and couple boxes of 12 gauge shells. You know, beer, whiskey and guns are the cornerstone of any good weekend party.
Some guy stole my caravan, which was used to steal an atm.
@edguyver14 Now that is impressive.
When I lived in places where breakins were more of a concern, I had the uglymobile with a bunch of fast food wrappers tossed in the back seat. No one would bother. The car’s engine was worth more than the contents of the interior (aside from the rare time I left my macbook in the car while running errands), and my burnt CD collection (cause my shitty CD drive would just scratch them up anyway) wasn’t to anyone’s tastes. “Broadway mix 1”, “bubblegum pop”, “gothrock”, “Disney faves”, etc. circa 2006.
Nothing seems right in cars.
@thismyusername Domp-De-Domp, Dee-dee-dee, Domp-De-Domp!! Thanks…Now that ear worm is going to be stuck in perpetuity!!
Yes, and it’s such a sickening feeling when you get the car back after the police find it and you drive it home knowing someone like that was in there. Yicks.
@moonhat if it was a KIA, you probably couldn’t avoid that yucky feeling when driving anyway because you know, it’s a KIA.
@elimanningface It was a Honda civic. Of course. Now I have a VW beetle that I assume is not on a most-commonly-stolen-cars list. And it’s a manual, which I hear is a good thing because so many thugs out there only know how to drive automatics…
/giphy can’t drive
@elimanningface @moonhat Every once in a while giphy hits one out of the park.
@elimanningface @moonhat I read that as “killed in action” and my brain is off on this tangent where the cops killed the thief in your car and they give it back to you with blood all over the seats…
Broke the rear window on a Volvo wagon to steal jumper cables and flares. Fuck Brooklyn.
Didn’t get in, but broke the locks, which cost nearly $100 to replace.
Thanks, Meh, for this poignant reminder that people suck.
SOB stole my favorite, discontinued by the manufacturer man purse! AND caused about $600 in damage to boot.
@ruouttaurmind that looks like a European carry all to me.
@ruouttaurmind
Umm so I have lived in some “neighborhoods”… this one the second worst neighborhood in Columbus OH (also lived in the worst one after that). Any way this house was owned by a drug dealer, attic lined with plastic to keep the rain out of the rest of the duplex (once a bird got its head stuck in one of the holes in the roof, we liberated it and it flew to the top of the abandoned and boarded up house next to us looking ring killed), backed up to an empty warehouse (where my landlord was later arrested for an indoor pot growing enterprise)…
So one snowy night I heard breaking glass (maybe 6pm and dark). A bit later a guy comes up on the porch. Thinking it is a housemate I get up to open the door. He runs off before I even get completely off the couch. Cops come, knock on the door and want to see the bottom of our feet (tracks in the snow from another house that had been broken into that led to our house). Nope not us. I nearly opened the door to the thief. Oops. Good thing I was home and in the living room as that saved us from being broken into too. Breaking glass turned out to be the window of my pickup truck which was parked on the street and everything inside it was stolen.
@Kidsandliz now that’s a story!
@Kidsandliz Reminds me of a friend’s story. He was in bed in his new (old) home one night when he heard someone break the glass, open his door, and start walking around downstairs. He got up and yelled something akin to ‘alright motherfuckers, I have a brand new Glock I’ve been dying to shoot someone with and I’m coming for you.’ He heard some quick footsteps and the door as the burglar took off. Turns out the previous owner of the home had just passed away and his info was posted in the obits. Apparently some thieves look at this stuff and will go to their homes figuring they’re now empty. There was no updated information for this guy so it was assumed he had still lived there.
@Kidsandliz Decades ago, I was awakened predawn when the Great Dane in my bed started barking like a crazy dog. I couldn’t get her to shut up so I put her in the garage. When I got up a couple of hours later, the doors to my car in the driveway were standing open but nothing was missing. I expect she hit that garage door like an angry grizzly bear and scared them away. Stupid of me, if they’d been breaking into the house I’d have locked away my first line of defense. A potentially expensive lesson cheaply learned.
Meh is making the assumption that we all have cars. You insensitivity to the carless is just shocking.
@hchavers Your inability to discern the poll option “No, that could never happen to me” before posting is even more shocking to the rest of us.
Oh I got a story.
Someone “broke in” (it was unlocked) my mom’s minivan and stole nothing. In fact, they left a North Face jacket and some bootleg Sugarhill Gang CDs. Oh, and an empty bottle of cheap hooch. Probably a drunk sleeping it off. Still, we locked the doors after that.
@cpierce Back in the late '70s my Mom had a Chevy Biscayne. We hadn’t had problems with the hippies in the park for a while and she didn’t always lock the car. But drunk bums were migating closer to our neighborhood. One morning she went out and found a couple of empty bottles, footwells full of vomit, and the back seat covered in diarrhea.
As I recall she got rid of the car. It had vinyl seats so it could have been cleaned up, but for her it was ruined. The bastard stole a lot from her even though nothing in the car went missing.
@duodec Eeeeww. Yeah, I’d have to get rid of that car. Horrific.
@cpierce @duodec Yeah, I was thinking I’d have tossed a match in it before calling the cops. “I found it this way, officer.”
Right in the driveway. The thieves were identified but never charged because the police got them on more serious charges. Stinking tweakers, they stole a lot of stuff from a lot of people and got caught.
They stole a GPS unit, some tools from the glovebox, a military wool blanket and a poncho liner I keep in the back. I got some of it back, but not the GPS.
My uncle had a crappy old truck, barely running, but he loved it. Some dumb potheads decided this hunk o’ junk is exactly what they need for a joyride. End up rolling the truck and hitting a tree. Cops find them sitting on the side of the road, still laughing about it. Turns out, that uncle pays way too much on insurance as he had it listed as a collector vehicle or something, and so he ends up with way, way more than he’d have ever got if he’d tried to sell. I, meanwhile, was moving, and had a guy steal a box out of my car when I was parked at a gas station somewhere in Kansas. Thankfully, he picked the lock instead of busting glass. I’m still not sure what exactly I lost, but it clearly was that important.
I was borrowing my dad’s car for a few days, and for some reason I left my nice camera under the front seat while it was parked overnight in front of my place.
The thieves broke in (left no damage while entering…did I leave it unlocked?) stole the camera, stole the spare key in the glove box but didn’t steal the car! (Value of the car was waaay more than the camera?! Less portable, sure…but…no risk, no reward, punks!)
Dad and I puzzle over that one now and then. I still miss that camera and the undeveloped pix I’d taken earlier that day while I was up in Estes Park, CO. (This all happened in 1993, youngsters, back in the film era.)
@UncleVinny Fi-ilm?.. did you mean they stole your camera’s memory card?
Three times. Years ago. The first was when I was in college. They got a bunny pez dispenser and other contents from my glove compartment. Another time, after taking a short trip, we stopped at my aunt’s home to bring a gift we had bought for her. We opened the trunk that was filled with our bags, and took out the present. I had the feeling that we were being watched, and looked around. There was no one at all, and the street was quiet. I double checked the trunk, after my husband closed it, to make sure it was locked. When we got home we opened the trunk-- it was empty. Ironically, just before we left for the trip, we stopped to visit my mother-in-law. She gave my husband an old coin that she had come across. My husband’s grandfather had given it to her to save for my husband (a favorite grandchild), and he had put in a suitcase. The third was the week after we bought our new car. My husband parked it in the parking lot at work. Someone smashed the driver side window, but luckily someone saw him and yelled at him (he ran away). This time I think they wanted the car and not the contents. We no longer live in a big city.
I’ve got a driveway that I rent for my Jeep Wrangler TJ. This is an easy vehicle to break into. Like, if the soft top or half doors are on, unzip a window and you’re in. Even with a hardtop and full doors, any kid with a paperclip can pick the lock.
I had the hard top on (which is a two piece thing, where the front half comes off, but still easy enough to get into) and for some reason somebody tried to steal the front portion of the hard top. They gave up, cause I guess it was too hard/heavy to figure out how to steal it, but it was interesting waking up and ready to leave with a portion of the top out of place.
My doors don’t lock, but it looks like shit with black doors and white body and holes. It doesn’t exactly look like a target
… No, but my mom [who always locked her car at night] was a victim of both a break in and a theft, twice in the same week… By the same thief…!! He got caught the first time, car was returned… made bail then repeated the crime… Funny thing is it wasn’t a high-end make/model and it was ten years old. Even the cops were puzzled.
I’ve had cars broken into in my driveway twice. But the best story was the one broken into in Rome. We were at the Vatican hearing the Pope say Mass, our rental car was parked near Ponte Sant’Angelo and Castel Sant’Angelo. We’d checked out of our hotel and were headed for Austria after our visit to the Vatican. All the way across Italy, we’d been warned about pickpockets and purse snatchers in Rome, so we left our valuables in the car on the floor concealed under a jacket. They broke the side window and took my jacket and my valise containing my passport, ID, the last of my travellers checks, the book I was reading and, greatest loss, five rolls of film from Ireland. It was meant to be, as that same morning I was stormed on the bridge by a flock of little kids who patted me down looking for something to steal, so if I’d been carrying the bag it would have been lost anyway. Acquiring a replacement passport was a very memorable adventure. This was before the EU, the Rome Embassy was closed for Labor Day, and we had to keep moving to make our flight home. I smiled my way through two border crossings with no passport, charmed my way into the Munich Embassy despite it being closed, and talked them into giving me a passport with no ID.
“Broken into” would implied that it was locked. I lived a block from the high school at the time, and in my tiny little town that was the “high crime” area. Someone snagged a discman and a leather jacket because I wasn’t in the habit of locking things up.
Honestly, I’m still not. I even leave the keys in the ignition 99% of the time. It’s just not a thing that happens much around here.
@dannybeans And in winter, here, we just leave the car running when we go to the store, to keep it warmed up.
@sligett Yep, we do that too.
@dannybeans @sligett Nice. If you did that here your car would be in Mexico before you got into the checkout line. We have very little violent crime but lots of property crime. My only serious complaint about my Honda Civic is that you cannot lock it when the engine is running in neutral (it’s manual), so I can’t leave the A.C. on for my dogs when I make a stop. People say, “Nobody’s going to mess with a car with two 120lb dogs in it”, but anyone who knows dogs would easily discern that these guys are not guard dogs.
My locked '86 Firebird was in my condo parking lot. I got in to go to work and saw a bunch of black plastic pieces around the seat. I was a little perplexed as to what this was. Started looking around and saw a perfect handprint on the driver’s side window. Looked around some more and saw someone had tried breaking the ignition. Someone must have scared them away because obviously my car was still there. Nothing was stolen from inside because I never kept anything in the car.
I went to work and called the police when I got home. They interrogated me inside and told me to buy a jack for the steering wheel. One cop was checking out my condo - asking questions about it! Like I was her personal realtor, the fucking bitch. I was violated and they didn’t care. They never even looked at the car nor took the print!
@looseneck Those steering wheel clubs are useless. My grandfather had one, and they just cut the steering wheel and took it off before stealing his car.
@Seeds It’s still a deterrent that would make them look for an easier target.
Well, it wasn’t my car, but someone got into the rental car my folks and I were using on a trip to LA back in 2002. They stole my CDs and MP3 CD player. There was stuff on those CDs I didn’t recover for a decade.
Never had someone break into my car, BUT I have had my license plate stolen a few times. Truthfully the first time I was somewhat happy as my license plate was 6BJ BJ9. After that, it just became an annoyance.
**I’ve always opted for the randomization with my plates.
@theonlybuster Oh, I had a vanity plate stolen once. I no longer recall what it said, but as it was stolen, they wouldn’t replace it with the same one. I suspect it was taken by the guys from Sears who delivered and installed our new fridge.
I no longer get vanity plates.
The real question is…have you ever broken into your own car?
@wmbarr umm yes. Multiple times. Kid kept locking my keys in there and I was stupid and never had spares with me. Minivan. Pry the side window open on the driver’s side where the window lock thing is and pop it so you can open the window (these are the vent style windows and not roll down). Use a long broom handle to reach and then push the lock on the passenger side sliding door. Less than 5 min, minimal scratches to the side window.
The year was 1995. The car a 1982 Datsun 200SX - which I pronounced “sux”. This case looked as good as it ran, and it was very consistent. Every 200 miles it would take 10 gallons of gas and a quart of oil. I had just gotten my first full-time job and was one day away from moving from my college town to the new job location. I never kept anything in the car except my double-sided 60-tape cassette case. It stayed in the car probably 90% of the time.
I’m not positive how they got into the car since I always kept it locked and there were no signs of entry (but who knows, with such a fine piece of craftsmanship like this car, they may have stuck their own key in the door lock and opened it and THEN realized it wasn’t their own car). Anyway I get out to the car and think “My tape case is gone. Weird. I don’t remember taking it inside…but I must have.”
I’m still bitter about my missing tapes.
83’ Nissan Sentra; Tucson, AZ.; 22nd and Craycroft; Thunderbird apartments. Walked out to the car one morning to go to work. The car was gone. Thought I parked it somewhere weird. Walked around the parking areas and finally saw it. They had broken in by pushing the window down in the track. The Sentra was known for window tracking issues. How did they know? Got in, released the brake, pushed it away from the lighted parking area. The car was worth maybe $500. The Blaupunkt stereo was worth more. They used a limb saw or something similar and cut a jagged hole in the dash around the stereo and took the stereo and the hunk of dash with them. I sure did miss that Blaupunkt stereo!
I once look left my car unlocked right outside my apartment, and someone bothered to steal a cheap audio cable. Nothing else, just this plastic male-to-male stereo cable. Must have been a child, is all I can think, to be into stealing a thing of that little value.
It had a short in it and I was already planning on throwing it away. Hah! Joke’s on you, ya damn kid.
Three times - twice the whole car was taken but recovered. Once stolen from behind work and once from behind my apartment. These were times 2 &3.
The first time was from the driveway at my parents home. Whoever broke in went through all the cassettes I had in the car, but didn’t take ALL of them. Just selected what he/she liked. Didn’t take anything else either, guess it was kids.
F***heads broke into my 1974 Plymouth Duster (busted out the side window). They couldn’t get the stereo out…believe you me, they tried! Must’ve used the crow bar they used to break the window! F’ed up the whole dashboard area around the stereo…Ended up taking two satellite speakers which were probably worth $40 on the high side! When I got up the next day and saw the damage, I noticed a large police presence across the street from me, so I walked over to talk to an officer. When I mentioned the offence, he told me they were investigating a murder! So I guess my small loss was nothing in comparison. Gave me quite the story to tell I guess…
@tohar1 Misery and pain to the the defilers of a Mopar. A pox on them.
@duodec It was actually a pretty cool car. I pulled the straight-6 out & brought it to a specialty machine shop and ended up with a big cam, 4 barrel carb & header exhaust. Looked cool & could keep up with any Camaro or Mustang on the street!
I wish I still had the car now!!
Some of these stories remind me of the car that wasn’t stolen, despite my best efforts. I like small stick shifts, but when I was still in my teens buying my second car, my mom talked me into buying this behemoth automatic. I hated that car, it was a gas guzzler, a PITA to park downtown where I worked, and most damning of all, was no fun at all to drive. I wanted out of it, but couldn’t sell it. It was fully insured so I started parking a few blocks from my office in a very bad neighborhood, leaving it unlocked with the keys on the seat in plain sight and still no one took the damned thing. Once I got it paid off I traded it in on my first Honda Civic and have driven nimble little stick shifts ever since.
My car as a feature where if you hold down the unlock button on the remote, the windows and sunroof open. Well, one day I did that accidentally in my pocket without noticing, while my car was parked on the street. Next day, I come out to my car completely soaked on the inside from an overnight storm, but otherwise fine - no one had stolen anything out of it overnight.
Though the repair shop still hasn’t returned the arm and leg I gave them.
@cspwal offer them a trade of a pound of flesh to get the arm and leg back? (
)
My roommate’s Honda Civic was broken into last week and they stole the airbags. All the Civic’s in our apt garage were hit even with a gated garage.
Apparently it’s been happening a lot recently specifically to Accords and Civics
Back in the 70’s, when you were lucky if your car was still intact in NYC, a neighbor tried to sell my car.
There was an abandoned car, the same model as mine, parked on the block. Eventually it was gone.
One day I’m looking out the window of my apt and see a tow truck hooking up to MY car. I go out and tell him it is mine. He says he just paid a woman in another apt building for it. I told him, but this isn’t abandoned, it has plates. She never showed you any ownership papers.
So he unhooks my car and goes to get his money back. She comes to the apt building door, with a young baby in her arms. It is a very cold winter day. The baby is not dressed for outside. She argues with the guy for about 5 or 10 minutes, the entire time standing in an open door with the tiny baby.
Eventually she gives the guy the money back.
When she moved we decided to check out her apt. There was a ring of dog urine around the wall. (she had a ground floor apt, that had a small back yard, so she could have put the dog on a chain and let it outside very easily). Everything was wrecked. The building was only 2 years old.
I guess the only reason she lived there was the super was a drug dealer. Easy to get your drugs. Not so easy to get anything fixed!
Someone broke into my '97 Lexus and stole my gym bag with my smelly/ mildew towel bathing suit and stuff I use while surfing. It still kinda felt like I got violated.
In the early 2000s my car was parked on the street in front of my girlfriend’s house in a wealthy neighborhood that is surrounded by really bad neighborhoods. It was near Christmas and my car was full of presents from shopping that day.
I heard a car pull up and set the emergency brake but not shut off. This struck me as odd so I got up to check out the window. I saw a giant of a man quietly lowering the hood of my car so I started to get dressed.
My girlfriend thought quicker than me and opened the upstairs window and yelled something like “they’re stealing, get the gun!” causing the guys to scatter. I went outside to my car open with one bag of presents dropped just outside the car and their old LTD taking off down the street. I had an alarm so the one guy pushed the window down in its track and popped the hood to disconnect the battery.
They had hit the neighborhood hard that night and when the police came they said they were basically busy taking all the calls, so I told them I’d like to go find the guys. They advised me not to but with a little bit of “but if you do, don’t engage them and call us if you find them” so I spent the next three hours patrolling both the good neighborhood and the bad ones around it with a Q beam and a Glock .40. Thankfully I didn’t find them, because at that age I hadn’t really thought that through fully. That night I must have seen a dozen places on the street where windows had been smashed and the cars were no longer there, so I was very lucky to get no damage and nothing missing.
the Year, 1999. Late May. Took some My Buddy Ryan, our friend Sara, and Ryan’s Little Sister(late elementry school age??) on a trip down to Columbus, OH, on a weeknight, to see “The Phantom Menace” in a good theater.(the ones we had here at that point were all from the pre-thx era and smelled like feet.)
we got there a bit early, went to the Old Navy around the corner in the same plaza as the Theater(Lennox Town Center, just off the OSU campus)
had been there many times before, had always been a safe neighborhood…
this Next part is absolutely True, not made up.
While i was trying on a pair of pants in the Old navy Dressing Room, I felt, what i can only describe as “a disturbance in the Force” a wave of unease came over me. but i shook it off, and went on with my day.
when we all get our shopping done, we head for the car to put the bags in the trunk before the movie starts.
Car is GONE. Some one Stole My 1987 Olds 98 in Old man Champagne Gold inside and out, with a matching vinyl top.
we go into the theater, (8pm)Tell them, “another one?” and they call the cops. (another car was stolen from that Lot at the same time, for a total of about 6-8 in the prev. week) this was also the time The Little sister tells us that she has School in the morning.( we thought her school year was already over)
now comes the FUN part…Calling My parents to come get us. (had my friends call their folks first, cuz I knew my dad would be FURIOUS, none of them were able to come…) We are 2 hrs from home, so 4 hr round trip for dad, it’s about 9:30p when i call him, and he arrives around midnight. ranting up a storm about having to be on the road for work at 5 am, working 100hrs a week, yadda yadda…
that was a fun 2hrs of angry dark silence on the way home…
we get back, around 2 am, dad storms off to bed( “I have to be up in 3 hrs”) and I drive everyone else home.
i get a Call a few days/a week later from the police that they’ve recovered my car, and tell me where to pick it up.
dad just happened to be home at the time, so he called in a personal day, we went down, paid the impound fees, had them start the car, and drove it home.
(they had Popped the Driver’s lock with a screwdriver, busted the Column open and started it with that same screwdriver, then stole my Stereo(but not the faceplate that was in the map pouch on the front of the driver’s Seat, and all my CD’s that were in the car…
like a pair of idiots Ryan and I had left our CD Binders out on the front seat…
Broke the window, stole only the radio face plate and left me a free steak knife. I even had an amp and sub in the trunk that wasn’t really bolted down at the time. Kind of a dick move even for a thief. If you can’t get the radio out, why bother taking the face plate? Neighbors said they heard my car alarm, but I sure didn’t. Maybe that spooked them.
Kids break into my cars get broken into all the time I live near Section 8 Housing and they always come up and steal change from my change holder… never anything else they could have stolen my iPod and phone and other stuff but they never touched it… one ass hat didn’t close the door and had dead battery in the morning!
Always lock my car in the driveway, but, long story, didn’t this night. Just change from the ash tray taken. Pretty sure it was my grandson. Another long story.
I had my car “broken” into (I kept it unlocked as I only had an ignition key at the time- crappy used car deal) while parked in a parking garage. They didn’t steal the car (which had my keys in it under a jacket) and likely got spooked and fled, leaving behind some items they had pilfered from other cars. I gained a first aid kit and umbrella out of the deal.