<VV> Stolen Corvair recovered (vey long)

Fri May 20 23:14:18 EDT 2005

I got it back! It's not all good news and it has been a struggle, but it is back home.

The story goes as follows:

I usually park it inside my garage (repair shop) overnight, but there wasn't room last Saturday (because of customer cars) so I left it out. It wasn't the first time and I hid it between some regular cars.  When I went to put in inside Monday night I noticed it was gone and reported it to the local (Matthews) police. They told me it would be a little while becaue they were working a bank robbery and it was shift change. An officer came in about 20 minutes to take the report.

I didn't hear anything on Tuesday. I didn't expect to.

Late Wednesday afternoon a guy in the adjacent shop (Goodyear) received a call from someone who claimed to know where the car was and who had it. He didn't want to identify himself but he gave the name of the person he said had the car and said it was parked behind his mobile home on Indian Trail-Waxhaw Road. That road is about 13 miles long and is another County. The caller gave the number of the county Sheriff's office and gave instructions to ask for a "detective". The caller thought that the car came from the Goodyear's parking lot.

I tried to research the information on the internet and couldn't find anyone with the name we were given anywhere near the road where the car was supposed to be.

I called the number in the adjacent (Union) county and told the story. I was told I had to call the town (Matthews)where the report had been made. I called Matthews police and they told me that the guy who took the report was off that night and that I should call Union County. I called Union couinty again and they didn't seem to want to do much. That night I drove up and down the road and looked at all the mobile homes and tried to look behind them without finding anything that looked like my car. After I got home I got a call from an officer in the Union county police who told me he once had a Corvair and had sent out 2 officers to look behind all the mobile homes on the road. They didn't find anything.

On Thursday morning I decided to call the Matthews police and see if there was any progress. The receptionist told me that a Detective had been assigned to my case and she would have her call me. In the mean time an employee of mine  with a wife in a government job in another county had her do some research on the guy we were looking for. She wasn't supposed to be doing it and I can't say much about it ( but people who would steal cars often have criminal records and are often on the public dole). She came up with a person who lived in the right area with the right last name but the wrong first name. I went to the address and saw that it was a house in an area with several mobile homes and lots of old cars and several buildings where cars could be hidden. I drove by several times but couldn't see my car. That afternoon at about 3:30 I decided to call the Matthews police again and asked for "my" detective. She was there and after I told her the case number she looked it up on her computer and said it was indeed hers, but she hadn't looked at the computer to see it so she hadn't done anything. I told her the whole story. She called me back about 15 minutes later and asked the name of the guy at Goodyear so she could come interview him.

That night I got a call at about 9:30 form a friend who hangs around my shop and gets me to work on his old cars (he's a Ford guy and owns the American Station Wagon Association). He was calling on his cell pnone and was following my car going towards Charlotte from Matthews. He had spotted the car driving through the town of Matthews which is about 3 miles from where it was stolen. He recognized the car because of the wheels, roll bar and some blue paint, but said that it had been painted black! I called the Matthews police and told them about it. They told me I would have to talk to the Charlotte police and patched me through to them on the 911 line. I told the Charlotte police what was going on and they told me to stop the guy from following the car because he wasn't authorized to do that. I called him back and he told me that he had just flagged down a Charlotte police car which was now pursuing my car. I called 911 back to tell them and they told me that the officer couldn't follow the car because it hadn't been involved in a felony (Charlotte has a no pursuit policy). My friend lost sight of my car and never saw the cop again.

Today the detective came to my shop and interviewed my friend who had followed the car. He gave her a good description of the perp and I told her where I suspected the car was. She told me she hadn't been able to find anyone on that road with the right last name through any of her sources. I was a little vague about where I got my information. She then interviewed the guy at Goodyear and told me she thought she would get my car back pretty quickly.

About an hour later she called me to tell me she had my car. She told me she drove to the address I gave her and the perp drove the car onto the road in front of her. She pulled him over and made the arrest. She told me she would call back to let me know where to get the car. I turns out that the car was at 1907 and the address I had given her was 1902, obviously a relative.

She called back and told me that they had to tow the car to a shop near me and that I had to go to the police station and sign a form before I could pick it up. I would also have to pay for the tow. The form I had to sign said everthing on the car was in "bad" condition and that I accepted that fact. I had to sign it before I even saw the car. I'm sure it was to absolve them of any liability.

I went to get the car and had to pay $100 for the tow (about 6 miles) before I could see the car. The guy had painted it with a spray bomb until the can (or 2) ran out. He got the left side covered pretty well but ran out of paint before he got to the back of the car on the right side. He put a few slashes of paint on the hood and deck lid for good measure. I'm sure his thought (if he was capable of thinking) was to camaflage the car. The finishing touch was his hand lettered cardboard "plate" which said the plate was lost. He wrote a fake number on it.

He had an old GM key that worked my ignition switch, I'm not sure where he got it-not from me. He didn't do any other damage I could see except it looked like he had been driving it in some dirt and grass. The engine it now running on 5 cylinders and is making noise in the valve train. I hope it is just a pushrod or rocker arm problem. It doesn't look like the fan belt came off.

I was going to have to repaint in anyway because the paint was getting faded. I'm going to have to move up the schedule a little. I was also going to build a good engine for, probably with EFI. I had already started that project. Now I'm also going to have to buy a new license plate for it.

I'm really glad it wasn't a real car thief or I might never had seen it again. I don't think I'm supposed to divulge the name of then perp because he hasn't been proven guilty (and is probably walking the streets or in another stolen car now) but I wouldn't buy a car from anyone named David Anthony Haire.

Spence Shepard