OMFG y'all this week has been bananas bullshit.
(All pictures are shamelessly stolen with a blatant disregard for the laws that govern basic human decency.)
Two weeks ago I owned a 1997 Honda Civic named Trevor because he's a cool 90s dude:
Then, over last weekend I finally decided it would be okay to own a car that did more than the bare minimum, and upgraded to a 2011 Civic (as yet unnamed because it's really not as charismatic as Trevor) last Monday, February 26th:
The plan was to sell Trevor to a friend, because his trade-in value is like $60, and his sell-to-a-person value is like $1300.
THEN. We came home from dinner on Friday night and made our usual joke about Trevor's hamster face when we drove past where the car was parked on the curb. Saturday morning Trish went to go to work and was like "Uh, your car is gone?"
Based on the
car theft statistics in Portland, this was not surprising news. I figured it probably wasn't a big deal. I filed my police report and the officer and I agreed that they'd probably call me in a couple days when they found him to come pick up my (somewhat stinkier) car and we'd all go on with our lives. This is exactly what happened when our neighbor had her Accord stolen over Christmas, and seems to be a theme.
It did not work out that way.
I got a call late on Saturday night that the Clackamas County Sheriff had recovered Trevor in a traffic incident and that the car really wasn't in driveable condition so they were having him towed to a lot and I said that was really fine because I don't have the resources to suddenly deal with a disabled car in the middle of the night on a weekend.
Sunday morning I touched base with the police and the tow lot. The police were like "we have someone in custody!" and the tow lot was like "it'll cost you $300 to spring your car, but if you wait until tomorrow you can save money on a 'gate fee' oh and also your car is probably fucked or whatever".
So yesterday I was like "I'll take a couple hours and get this stuff straightened up" which is not what happened at all. Starting at 10:30 in the morning, I drove all over town and made a gajillion calls, talked to the Clackamas County DA about how the guy who stole and wrecked my car probably
is a danger to society, and agonized over which shitty decision to make about my poor car.
Mind you, at this point I really didn't know what condition he was in. He'd been towed to an "unattended" lot, which meant I needed to make an appointment to get in to see the car so I felt obligated to have a plan in place before I wasted a bunch of someone else's time. So I called my parents twice to talk through the choices I had which came down to the following:
- Pay $340 to spring Trevor from the lot. Pay to have him towed to a mechanic. Pay to have him repaired. Hopefully sell him at not a loss.
- Pay $340 to spring Trevor. Pay to have him towed.... somewhere. Deal with a bunch of weirdos online to get him parted out.
- Pay the lot the $250 impound fee and sign the title over to them so they can auction him off.
After a lot of back-and-forth and an unreturned call to my mechanic, I opted for 3 in the interest of just getting things resolved. So I called the tow company and was like "yes, hello, I'd like to give you my car but first try to recover some stuff from it" and they were like "sure no problem we'll meet you there in half an hour."
So five hours after I started my "fix the car situation" escapades, I arrived at the tow lot. It became apparent that 1 was never an option at all, and 3 was definitely the correct choice. Both airbags had deployed, and there was front end damage sufficient to involve the engine compartment. Additionally, the thieves had decided to spray paint the hood and passenger side front quarter panel black, and the opposing quarter panel silver??? The car was stuffed full of gross dirty laundry, garbage, and used sharps, and there was honest-to-God methamphetamine in the glove box.
All things considered, the $250 hit was really way more than worth it. There's some possibility that I would have been able to break even if I did the salvaging myself but I super do not have the resources to make that happen and also do not want hepatitis that badly.
So, rest in peace, my sweet 90s dude. You're rolling with the angels now.
