This post is coming to you from a table outside the carvel in Cumming/Suwanee, GA. I’m finally actually getting some use out of one of this year’s most extravagant purchases, my IBM T22 thinkpad notebook.

Anyways, on with the post…. one of the instructors I have worked at the gym with for the past few years had his car stolen and then found again in the same week. His name is Ryan O. Ryan started out at the gym while still high school student (at chattahoochee high) doing bday parties and moved on to tumbling classes. Ryan is in to the whole ‘ricer car’ scene. He owns a 2014 Honda Civic Del Sol that he has upgraded with a body kit and a few other aftermarket accessories. Just last weekend he swung by and tried to convince me to go to a body paint shop in Buford with him. I declined.

On monday, Ryan called and told me that his car, the one that made him very proud after buying from this new car dealer in Columbus, had been stolen… right out of the parking lot of Georgia Perimeter where he’d had classes earlier that morning. Ryan’s car (and most other Del Sols) are 7 years old and worth under 5k, which hardly makes them valuable commodidities to hoist on the black market… So it was obvious that his car’s appearance and accessories are what had made it a target in this case. However, some of the more interesting circumstances surrounding the car’s theft seemed a little more than coincidental:

First off… remember that trip to the paint shop that I declined to go on? Well, Ryan had left his car at the shop about 3 days prior to its disappearance to get it primered for an upcoming paint job. Upon retrieving his car from the paint shop he noticed that 3 extra miles had been put on the odometer.

Second, Ryan had an alarm system in his car which is designed to thwart conventional auto theft by locking down the ignition system. Instead of jimmying the key with a screwdriver and sending electric current to the ignition lead in order to start the car and drive it, in Ryan’s car half the ignition system must be rewired (and the security system detached from the circuit) in order to keep the car from turning itself off.

This led him to the conclusion that someone at the paint shop had copied his car key and used it to steal his car. A theory later supported by the fact that the police found no signs of forced entry or ‘hotwiring’ when they later found his vehichle.

These facts were reported to the local sheriffs, and Ryan’s dad who works in security systems for businesses, knows a thing or two about crooks and made some phone calls to the paint shop in question. Also Ryan put the word out among his friends in the 2 or 3 local car clubs he has been a member of and at the local honda dealership where he used to work… so there were plenty of eyes adding to the heat.

2 days after the first call, I got another call from Ryan reporting that most of his car had been found. It had been abandoned at the side of a road in Decatur about 30 min south of the parking lot from which it had been stolen. Most of the aftermarket pieces were missing, but a few had been replaced, which suggests that the car was hastily disposed of halfway through refitting it for a new owner. Perhaps after the crooks realized that law enforcment had a good idea of where to start sniffing around.

As of this posting, Ryan hasn’t heard anything new back from the police. His car isn’t quite drivable yet because of some of the missing pieces and the fact that there is a copy of his key floating around. Let this be a warning to folks using this paint shop. More news later as I hear it.