Jennifer’s car was stolen again…but rescued in five hours!

Yes, again. Now before you just sit there in disbelief, read on, there’s a happy ending as per the headline regarding yesterday’s “fun.”

Firstly, the circumstances were very different. It wasn’t professionals yanking her Nissan Rogue from our driveway to cannibalize it for parts. This time it happened at work and purely by accident. Jennifer unknowingly dropped her keys in the parking lot so the thief used the opportunity. Jennifer discovered this fact within a couple hours, calling me at my job, obviously upset. I clocked out, fired up Find My on my iPhone because as soon as Carvana delivered this SUV, I had her permission to hide an AirTag in it (never going to tell where I put it). I needed a couple days to perfect its configuration to make sure future crooks wouldn’t even know of the AirTag’s existence.

Secondly, I headed out to see if I could spot the vehicle as per my conversation with 911. Spot the car, call back and APD or whoever’s jurisdiction the thief was in would arrive. No luck. The car was on the move which gave me pause, they were heading to our house! I arrived first, staked it out across the street. Nothing. Update showed they were now going in an entirely different direction. As per 911’s advice, the house wasn’t a good idea should they change their mind; now I’m using the plural because Jennifer was told by a security guard, two people were suspected to be in the vehicle. I camped out at my neighborhood Starbucks with their WiFi, calling 911 with new locations about every 15 minutes. The driver wasn’t very smart as the AirTag showed Jennifer’s car going in circles around the county line and North Austin…or a genius since this crossed over into three different jurisdictions.

Finally, the thief stopped in a North Austin neighborhood for over 30 minutes. I guessed there was a stop to see friends, trade drivers, I don’t know what exactly but I figured they were definitely stationary. Today I think they were trying to ditch the cops by staying off the main thoroughfares. Made yet another 911 call. The dispatcher said, go to the location and call again, don’t do anything stupid. No kidding! I hauled ass. Within the last mile to catch up the Jennifer’s car, they were on the move again, dammit! I still went to the last known location, looked briefly and continued the pursuit. When I got to the latest reported street, I saw the Rogue along with four police cars and six officers. Success!

The police took my ID while I showed them my iPhone pinpointing the vehicle. Woo hoo! They remanded the car right back to me. They then instructed me to throw away anything not ours and I got a hint about the thief being a woman. The personal items confirmed it. Hell, she practically moved into the darned thing. The back seat was soaked in wet clothes, wet bedding, ick. She also smoked, blech! I handed over everything I could immediately to prove they were not Jennifer’s items to the officers and I saw them put on gloves to inspect it all; I figure to check for extra stuff to add to the charge of stealing a car.

Jennifer arrived as soon as she could via rideshare and helped me assess the final damage. Not bad, the thief only spent $20 she found and damaged a tire; I think when APD boxed her in, she tried to do a 180 and hit the curb only to spot another police car behind her. We cleaned the Rogue quickly, bought a can of tire seal for the interim and drove to Discount Tire. While getting the new tire, we had a celebratory late lunch/early dinner at Culver’s, a yummy cheddar melt and frozen custard!

Now some of you think, hey, you’re rather vocal about the police. I am and I remain that. When it comes to this success, the police are doing their job as desired. I continue to favor reform regarding excessive force and pointing out how non-White people are citizens deserving the same amount of respect, urgency and service we received for our crisis. They didn’t need military-grade gear to solve this. Besides, one officer said my updates helped out. Phew! I thought I was becoming a pest to 911. I will be sending nice letters to all three jurisdictions for their dispatchers and help. Either way, apprehending stolen vehicles is important even if the car is a junker or an expensive sports car.

My biggest irritation involves the thief. It’s easy to hate her and her choice to do something really financially damaging to my household. It’s up to Jennifer to forgive her though. Me, I’m really pissed that what will happen is the thief will get prison, especially if this isn’t her first offense and the police found more damning stuff in her belongings. There should be a punishment but given what a mess America’s incarceration corporations have made, the thief will get little to no help to prevent this from happening again. She isn’t going to get medical care for a probable addiction, no training or education to find a better line of work and the biggest kick in the teeth is how we don’t give felons opportunities to rejoin society. The lesson she’ll probably get is, next time, do not get caught.

My lesson, the AirTag worked as designed and I will be endorsing their appropriate usage.