Stop, thief! (and don't change the station!)

My car was stolen last Friday afternoon.

In the wake of this outrage, I picked up some fun facts from the police department community volunteer who came to take the report.

For one, I found that I probably had at least a dozen fellow passengers in that particular canoe. In Chula Vista, 10-15 cars are stolen every day.

For another, I learned that my car is among the most-stolen models. I drive a Saturn. A 1995 Saturn, the absolute acme of a nondescript car. "Who would steal a SATURN?" I wondered aloud.

Well, The same community volunteer told me that there are a lot of Saturn "pass keys" floating around, making Saturns especially easy to steal. The only cars stolen more often than Saturns are Hondas and Toyotas. (I think the Toyota Celica is the most-stolen car in America.)

I suspected my car might be headed for a chop shop in Tijuana; Mexico is after all only about eight miles south of here. But no, the community volunteer (her name was "Valerie," same as my wife's) said it's usually old pickup trucks that end up in Mexico. Saturns and such are quite often stolen merely for joyriding. Sometimes the stereo gets ripped out, but sometimes there isn't even that much damage.

In fact, she said the police department has a 50 percent recovery rate for such cars. On that happy note, Valerie gave us a lift home.

Here's what had happened: my wife Valerie and I went to have lunch with my old friend Charlie, whom I've known since high school. We went to Ernie's Diner, my favorite Chula Vista hangout. (The waitresses all know me there, and there's an outside patio where you can sit when the weather is nice, which it usually is here.) Parking around Ernie's is dicey on Thursdays, as they have a Farmer's Market and the streets are closed. But we were there on Friday, with no restrictions on two-hour parking. I parked the car in front of the First Southern Baptist Church, just down at the end of the block.

We lingered over our late lunch for one hour, coming out of the restaurant about 3:15. The sun was shining. It was as broad daylight as daylight can be.

And my car, parked in front of a church no less, had vanished. At first I thought it might have been towed away. But why? I was parked in a two-hour zone and had only been there one hour. A quick call to the police department cleared that away; they had no record of my car's having been towed. That left only thing: it had been stolen.

I always thought that I would feel more personally violated by the theft of a car. Victims of theft and robbery often come away with a feeling of having been somehow raped, or at least with an uncomfortable feeling that this was a personal act directed at their personal self, as opposed to all of the anonymous criminal acts directed at other people which we read about in the papers every day. For the record, I did feel personally violated by the vandalism of another car, many years ago. But I had good reason that time. That time, it was personal. I was working in a convenience store, and had pissed off some local teenage pukes by refusing to sell them beer. When I locked up one night to go home and found one of my car's windows smashed, I knew who had done it and why.

But my reaction this time surprised me, and my wife told me later that it also surprised her. I sometimes have a short fuse, and she said she would have expected me to cut loose like a crazed orangutang at having my wheels stolen.

No. I called the police, then called for a cab. I did get a little impatient when it took the police 25 minutes to get there, but I'm just an impatient kind of guy. My wife has her own car, so I knew we wouldn't be completely stranded. And after all is said and done, I guess one just doesn't especially develop an emotional relationship with a 1995 Saturn. Had my car been a cobalt-blue 2006 BMW with leather upholstery, walnut steering wheel, GPS positioning system and a $5,000 Bose music system with XM Radio, I might have felt differently. But for a ten year-old Saturn with manual windows, doughnut spare tire and an old factory-issue cassette tape player, whose weather stripping is coming loose, by the way, you don't have a seizure. I called the insurance company when we got home and just sat back to wait.

Oh, yes, and I also had to take my wife's car, go to Hollywood Video and explain to them what happened to their VHS tape of Night And The City, starring Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney, which had been lying on the seat of the car. I had intended to return it after lunch. They were gracious. No, I wouldn't have to pay for it, not if it were in a car that had been stolen.

As the weekend went by, I began to wonder what I would do if the car were in fact, not recovered. My conclusion: no biggie. I'd been driving that car for two and a half years. My wife and I are thinking about buying a bed-and-breakfast in Washington state, and I had mentioned that a small pickup might be a good thing to have. Should the car not be found, I could use the insurance to make a down payment on such a pickup.

On Sunday morning, shortly before eight O'clock, I got a phone call from the police department. They had found my car. It was about three miles from the curbside where it had been taken, abandoned in the parking lot of the South County Public Library on Orange Avenue in Chula Vista.

I was given 15 minutes to get over there and pick it up, or they'd have it towed to a garage. I threw a jacket over my sleeping sweat togs, pulled on the old Adidas, told my wife to do the same, and we got into her Chrysler and fire-chased across town (getting lost on the way, and I've lived in this city much of my life) to the library. The irony of my car's having been stolen in front of a church and abandoned at the library wasn't lost on me. This thief, whoever he was, had a liking for sedate places. Who knows? Maybe he went in and checked out the latest Stephen King before leaving my car there.

The cop was waiting for us. He had opened both doors of the car. I glanced into the car as we pulled up: the radio and tape deck were untouched. And Stephen King notwithstanding, the thief was obviously not a fan of Night And The City: he hadn't even bothered stealing the videotape. Well, if he was under 25, which is likely, chances are he wouldn't bother with VHS--it's Sooo last year. (Year BEFORE last, actually.)

He had even cleaned the trash out of the back seat, which gave me an uneasy moment, actually: Valerie the police volunteer had asked me if there were anything in the car with identifying information on it, such as my social security number. I wasn't sure. I had tossed some opened envelopes and other detritus into the back seat, intending to clean it out later. Now the car thief had done it for me. Here's hoping identity theft isn't next on my calendar of surprises for this year.

It felt good to slide back into the old driver's seat again, I'll admit. The thief was obviously a little squirt: I had to readjust not only the seat, but the steering wheel, back to my height. I looked around. No sign of vandalism; in fact it looked like the vinyl around the stereo had been buffed up nice and shiny, (from his carefully wiping away his fingerprints) although the dashboard was still covered with dust.

In fact, the closest thing to vandalism I found when my car was recovered was something I discovered only when I started up the engine and prepared to pull out of the parking lot and drive it back home.

The radio began blasting out Dr. Dre or some such rubbish. Tidy or not, the little pustule-head had tuned MY car radio to a hip-hop station! Outrageous! I quickly reached over and punched it back to its customary spot, XLNC-1, which at that moment was offering Beethoven's Appassionata as played by Alfred Brendel.

Then it was home to get the Los Angeles Times out of the driveway and read about all those other people out there who had had similar, if not worse, indignities visited upon them during this sunny California weekend.

Okay, so I found out that I'm not exactly in love with my car. I was glad enough to have it back. With the vinyl around the stereo polished, I'll have to dust off the dashboard. Oh, what the hell? It's overdue for a wash.