An old friend is found....and let go.

At 3:00 AM this morning, we got a call from the Police stating they had found our car. The conversation whent something like this:

Police: Hello, Mr. Perry?
Dan: Yes?
Police: We understand you have a car missing?
D: That's right
P: Well, we've found it!
D: That's great!
P: Yeah...not so great.
D: Uh oh.

They found the car at a local park about 5 miles from our house, totaly gutted and stripped of everything. We could either come and get it or they would call a towing company and get it hauled off. We decided on the latter, since we didn't exactly own a tow truck.

This morning, the towing company called us to see what we wanted to do with the car. We decided to head out to the junk yard to take one last look, with hope that maybe, just maybe, we could salvage it for just another month or so.

My heart was beating so hard as we drove into the lot and I saw our poor little car. I expected the worse...but part of me didn't want to see what it looked like.


the outside didn't look too bad until we got a little closer and saw the inside.

I found it interesting, amusing, and shocking the things that they took...and didn't take. They stole one of the wheels...but not the brand new one we put on a few months ago.

They took the sun visors...


Each door was completely stripped...

They took the middle buckle on the back seat, but left all the other seat belts...

They took the passenger chair, and unscrewed the driver seat.

They took the middle console.

Of course they took the CD player, but the air vents? Maybe I don't know much about cars...but I certainly had no idea there was any value behind those little guys besides nice, cold air!

Dan had a bunch of Dental stuff in the trunk, like old teeth models, and they took all that. Dan says it's completely worthless, even to him...I'm just curious to know what they think they will get from them. NOt sure what a pawn shop would do with someone else's teeth model.

They left my trunk organizer, a quilt that we always leave in the car, and one of Chelsea's drawings. She was very happy to see it. They even left some important papers Dan needed for his board exams coming up. It really confuses me why they took the time to stick all this stuff in the trunk, although not before they cleaned out the spare tire and car jack.

However, we can't be completely upset about the whole thing, because they did leave Dan a present. They left a Bone Thugs CD for us! Dan is actully pretty excited about it and says it's now an even trade. He listened to it the entire way back home and up to school. (Yes...I'm cringing while typing)

So, the car is gone. Sometimes I feel like bursting into tears that someone could be so thoughtless. But then I feel sorry for them that they feel they have to do this to get whatever little money they can for it. The thing that makes me MOST angry, is that we are now responsible for the towing fee of $240.00!!!!

And no, we won't get any compensation from our insurance company, because we only had liability on it. We just didn't feel like it was worth enough to pay for whatever dammage might come to it. If we had had it, we probably would have come out for the better, but it was a gamble and we lost.

We just hope that we are the lucky ones who get to be one of the few statistics of victims of stolen and gutted cars and that you all will just get to say you "knew of a friend" that it happened to. Thanks for all your calls and concerns! We do appreciate it!