Where To Begin

I guess the best place to begin, is at the beginning, so that is where I will start.

Last Thursday I spent a good part of the day getting the animals fed and watered up extra because I had a trip planned on Friday.

Friday morning I left for Phenix City, AL to go and visit Sherry, my long time friend of over thirty years. We don't get to see each other often, and since she has had her baby a year and a half or so ago it is hard for her to get away from the house. She also has her hands full with Kelsey, her ten year old daughter. It is just easier for me to go down there and we always have a nice visit at her house. I usually spend the night and come back the next day.

I planned on leaving early so Sherry and I could spend some time together during the day before Kelsey got home from school. Kelly, her husband, kept their youngest daughter while we went out galavanting. First stop was a cute little corner diner where we had lunch. Afterwards we went across the street to a little thrift store and got a few cute things there. I found a huge ceramic seashell that will look nice on the bathroom counter with maybe some rolled up washclothes in it or something. After leaving there we went to a flea market about five or ten minutes out from where we were. It was full of treasures and of course we both found things to get there. I found Ian a really neat pipe that is wood and is a carved out dragon. I found a cute sign that of course had roosters on it. I will have to take pictures of these things later, but after Friday things went terribly wrong and I haven't felt much like taking pictures of the odds and ends we found, because they seemed so meaningless after what happened.

John and Christy, if your reading this, the only reason I haven't called and told you about this before is because its better here, where details are written down and I have told the story so many times now over the phone to Teddy and others that saw my post on Facebook about it, and called to check on me and my state of mind. I am okay, I just want things to get back to normal, whatever that is.

Here we go.

Friday night we went to bed at Sherrys around 11 pm. I always always always lock the truck with the remote, which also engages the alarm. Everytime I get out of that truck, I hit that button. This time was no different. I knew it was locked from earlier in the day when Sherry and I had returned from our outting, but being the OCD person I am I had to hit that button not once, but twice and hear the chirp of the alarm being engaged before going to bed. The truck was parked in the driveway, pulled up right by the window on the house, next to the couch that I slept on that night. I never heard anything. I don't sleep heavy when sleeping over at other folks houses, so I know they never could have cranked it in the driveway. Who is they you ask.

THEY are the people, persons, person, whatever, that TOOK my truck. Yes, it was stolen right out of the driveway. I don't know how they did it. The window was not busted out. I never heard an alarm, I never heard it being cranked. Somehow they managed to steal it during the night.

I woke up around 8 am, but everyone was still asleep so I just layed there, waking up, thinking about things the way anyone does when they wake up. Kelly, that is Sherrys husband came through the living room and we said our good mornings and he walked out the front door onto the porch to have a smoke. I got up and went to follow him outside. As I stepped out the door I looked to my left and saw Kelly, standing in the driveway where my truck should have been. It was like my eyes must have been playing tricks on me, I couldnt process what I was seeing. Then Kelly turned around and looked at me and said, "Where's your truck?"

It felt like a ton of bricks hitting me in the face. Yes, yes I said, yes, WHERE is my truck??? WHERE IS MY TRUCK??!!!??!! I said this over and over as I became increasingly freaked out and started crying and walking around in the driveway in disbelief.

The Phenix City police were called immediately. They took a good ten minutes to get to the house, guess its a good thing it wasnt an emergency. :( I had Bucktooth Barney and 'New police officer trainee' guy for my policemen. BB seemed to be less than concerned about much of anything, very nonchalant, very uninvolved and had a whatever attitude. Meanwhile the trainee was trying to be concerned and take down all my information. As they called in the report the truck came back as recovered.

It had been found, according to the report, at about 7:30 am in the middle of the road next to an abandoned hospital facility just a couple of blocks away. The police had it impounded and took to the impound yard by a wrecker after they had run the tags and it had not been reported stolen. EXCUSE ME!?!?!? Oh yes, I said this to the police officers standing in front of me. I said,

"Wait a minute, your going to tell me, that you found a fifty thousand dollar truck abandoned in the middle of the road, wrecked, damaged, (I will get to that later) and three hours from Polk County and it didnt dawn on someone that I would never leave a vehicle like this in the middle of the road, that is more than likely had to be STOLEN?????"

"Well uh ma'am we can't do anything if its not reported, we just have to take it to the impound and wait on the owner to call and report it stolen." says Bucktooth Barney.

The system is obviously flawed.

I asked about the vehicle being fingerprinted. Nope, I am told it has been compromised. When the truck was found it was handled by police and by the wrecker that towed it. BS. When I went to the impound to get my things out of the truck (Clothes, stuff from the flea market, etc) the thieves had gone through EVERYTHING. I mean, the glove box, the console, even the toys in the bed of the truck I had brought for Sherrys baby! I was told by the impound yard man that all of the employees fingerprints were on file so if the police needed to pull prints, theirs wouldnt be a factor. The thieves had even thrown three of my music CDs in the bed of the truck, for whatever reason. You know their prints HAD to be on those! I will get back to these three CDs later on in the story.

So of course right after the police had been called I called Ian. At the time I was still in freak out mode. He came straight down to my rescue. Sometimes I feel like such a child and he really is my knight in shining armor. He comes and makes everything okay. I love him so much, he is my life.

While I was waiting on Ian, Sherry and I rode to the impound and got my belongings like I was saying before. I took the camera with me and took a picture of the main damage. Now I wished I had taken pictures of all the damage, I dont know why I didnt. My mind is not always on top of things like it should be.

They smashed the face of the radio, they scarred up the ignition, had pulled off the right side of the steering column cover. It was deduced that the thieves took the truck up to the abandoned hospital and did burnouts and donuts. When they pulled out of the parking lot of the hospital they had to have punched it and had it wide open. They lost it and the rear drivers side wheel slammed into the curb, breaking off the wheel from the axle. Amazingly, the wheel and tire sat down flat immediately and the axle fell into the back of the wheel, holding up the body of the truck, keeping it from smashing to the ground and breaking the body of the truck. This picture was taken at the impound, but this is also how they found it in the road.





The employee at the impound said he could smell where the thieves had been smoking crack in the truck. :( So I had crackheads steal my truck, isnt that lovely.

Sherry does not live in a 'bad' neighborhood. The houses are older houses, very modest. No one is by any means well to do, but everyone keeps up their little yards and their houses are for the most part neat. Never in the twelve years they have lived there had anything like this every happened. Then again, no one there had a viper truck parked in their driveway overnight either.

Once Ian got to Sherrys, Kelly and him went to get some cash out of the bank. It was Saturday and there was no way for Ian to get money out at the credit union at work, so Kelly fronted us the cash. Impound facilities only deal in cash, so in order to get it out, thats what we had to have.

We had it towed to the nearest Dodge dealer and had it put in their shop. Of course then the insurance had to be called and dealt with. At first, things seemed to be going nicely. Our agent was very accomodating. His contact for sending out an adjuster called me, we talked in length, the adjuster would be out Tuesday to the dealer. The estimate the dealer gave for repairs was approved by the adjuster. Everything seemed to be going great.

The dealer called me and said he just needed the okay to start on repairs and I gave the okay. Being older and wiser I ask a lot of questions. He told me what was on the agenda to be repaired. Thats when it all fell apart.

The whole axle, wheel, tire, would be replaced...great!

The whole radio would be replaced...great!

BUT, the ignition switch was not approved to be replaced.

How could this be? It looked like HELL. It had been monkeyed with no doubt. Yes, we knew it would crank the truck, but it had been compromised. It was not in the condition it was before all this took place. WHY would you pay over 4000 dollars in repairs and decline to fix a small thing like the ignition switch and steering column cover??? I have no idea, so I called the guy that was in charge of the adjuster coming out and began to give him a very agitated conversation.

He said whoever stole it had the key.

WHAT????? NO THEY DID NOT! I said

Then he said we had to do a recorded interview because of this discrepancy. So he asked me a bunch of stuff and I answered. Then we got back to the ignition. He says his adjuster says,

It is operable, it works, so it would not be replaced.

BULLSH*T

If that was the case, if I had a big dent in my fender, but the truck still worked, they would decline to fix it??? I think not.

I told him it looked like they took a screwdriver to the thing and it is all scarred up and I want it replaced. It had been compromised, they had started it by tearing into that very area.

IT WILL BE REPLACED, thats all there is to it. I mean it, I wont have it any other way.

I am supposed to get a phone call this morning after the guy reviews his adjusters pictures and report. It better be all good news, thats all I got to say.

So, now you know, what has been going on, oh, I said I would get back to the CDs.

I had a phone call from the Phenix City police department yesterday. The policeman that was handling my case. He said that he was just calling to make sure I got my vehicle back. Ummm yeah, I sure did. That is not all I had to say to him though. I expressed my extreme displeasure with how this whole thing had been handled by the police officers that made the report and I explained to him they could have easily taken prints off the truck, the filthy thieves had had their hands on everything. I even told him about the three CDs thrown in the bed of the truck. This seemed to peek his interest. He actually seemed to care, and asked me if I still had the CDs. I said yes. He said to put them in a plastic baggie and handle them as little as possible doing so, and if I wanted to bring them to the police department for fingerprinting he would be happy to see to it. Wow. Someone was actually going to do some real police work. Amazing. I thanked him for doing this and told him it really meant a lot to me for someone to take the initiative to do something, anything. So, when we go back down there I will be dropping them off. It will take about a week for them to be processed. I am not holding out too much hope. But this is better than nothing. We will see.

I have a lot of other farm news, pictures to take, but I think this has been more than enough for today. Here are a few pictures of my beautiful truck I took right after detailing it, which I will be doing soon as I get it back home, to get every last inch of it clean of the nasty filth that is on it from those no good lowlife thieves.




















Isn't she just a lovely, beautiful thing? I do love this truck.