An Essay by Eric Picard
My daughter graduated recently from the University of Vermont and decided she wants to stay in Burlington full time. She got an apartment, she got a job, and she shuttled off into adulting with vigor.
A few weeks ago, she called me in a panic. The police had called to inform her that her car was stolen. She’d had a minor fender bender last year, and they had her contact info. A neighbor reported seeing someone stealing her car. She looked out the window and confirmed that the car, in fact, wasn’t there.
We knew this was a possible outcome of the fact that she drove a Kia Soul. Notoriously, Kia saved some money by not including modern theft deterrents in their cars during the affected period in which her car was built. But nobody plans for their car to be stolen. If we had, we’d have hidden an Apple AirTag in the car somewhere.
The police department, despite their proactive outreach, wasn’t much help at first. We weren’t even able to get a copy of the police report so we could update our insurance company. Eventually we did get the police report, and learned a bit more. Officers responded to the initial call and found broken glass at the scene. The car had been spotted exiting the driveway by a neighbor’s boyfriend who woke up to his dog barking at 3:10 AM. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a good look at the thief, the direction they went, or even the license plate other than the state it was registered in, which was all the police needed to find her based on her fender bender.
After that, the police went dark on us. That all changed a few days later when we found out that the young men who stole the car were now using it as part of a snatch-and-grab scheme, stealing women’s purses. They’d drive up to a young woman on the street, someone would jump out of the car, grab her purse, and jump back into the car and drive away. Patrol spotted the car driving and gave chase, but the car got away. I have questions about that one, because while the Kia Soul is agile and responsive, it is impressive that they outran the cops.
Detectives found the car abandoned in Essex Jct the next day. Probably because the thieves finally realized the Kia Soul was not the best getaway car, and now that they’d been chased, the gig was up. The detective assigned found stolen property from other larceny cases in the car, along with damage to the ignition and dash. Now that the she has the car back we were able to send it to get repaired and deloused.
The detective who worked with us was kind, responsive, and really helpful. The insurance company has been easy to work with, and we’re very hopeful that this whole experience will work through over the next month and be okay going forward. We’ll be buying one of those “clubs” for the steering wheel after this and putting an AirTag in the car.
I do have a lot of empathy for my daughter. She’s been working so hard to learn to adult. And she’s been distraught about her beloved little Kia Soul. The idea of someone driving it around was bad enough, but that it was used to terrorize women was even worse. Then she saw that not only had they taken her car, they used her makeup. And they even used her chapstick (ugh!)
I’ve helped out more than I typically like to — I believe in helping kids learn to adult, and letting them uncomfortably work through becoming independent. But this one felt like it warranted my involvement a bit more than normal. I’ve been coordinating with insurance, and with the detective, and with the dealership now that the car is recovered.
I look forward to hearing what she’s taken away from this, sometime in a year or two. “Remember that time the purse snatching crew stole your Soul and used your chapstick?”
In the end, the car was back with some extra “character” added to it, much like my daughter after this whole ordeal.
Eric Picard 