The tale of our truck

On Monday morning Alene went out to start the cold truck to let it warm up, as she always has done in the 2.5 years we've been married. She came back in to make a piece of toast and say goodbye and within that 3 minutes, someone had taken off with our truck.

We called the police and they came over to take our statement and issue us a case number. The entire day we were sick to our stomach thinking that someone else had our truck. We slept horribly that night......until we received a phone call at 2:30am on Christmas day.

The police in twin falls Idaho called us and reported that they had found our truck and it was in a walmart parking lot in Jerome, Idaho (which is just north of Twin Falls). They said the truck was left with the keys in it and the passenger side door was un-locked. They gave me an option of just leaving the truck there (they would obviously take the keys with them) and I could come claim it as soon as I could, or I could have it towed to a auto storage place and I could pay that fee to claim it. We decided on the later, just in case the thief decided to come back to the truck. We decided to have a good Christmas day and not worry about the truck, since it was found.

We had notified our neighbors to let them know what had happened. They are two brothers that live in a house next to us and are really cool. When they found out where it was, the younger brother (Kevin) works for Delta and immediately offered to find me a buddy pass to fly direct to Twin Falls for $20. He had everything lined up, for the most part, but the password and username he needed to log into the site to claim the buddy pass would not work and we could not get a hold of the person that gave it to him, so we ended up nixing that option, however we were very grateful for their offer. I ended up driving with my mom to Jerome to claim it. The drive was only 3 hours.

When I received the truck, the only noticeable difference was that they obviously rummaged through some things in the console, the back seat, etc., they listened to the rock station 98.3 REALLY loud, and they smoked in the truck, leaving ashes all over the seat, in my change area, etc. The only thing they did take was the gift Alene had bought for me and Caiden (guitar hero), which she had saved from her own personal money. I felt so badly for her.

Being the sleuth I am, I decided to go back to the walmart there in Jerome to see if anyone had returned a guitar hero set on Monday. The manager at walmart was very helpful and said it would take a few days, but they will look for sure and get me whatever information they could find, even camera information. I guess we will see how that turns out. I had to take a chance and try to find out something.

So, the truck is back. I just need to vacuum it out and do my best to get the dirty hippy/smoke smell out of it. Other than that, the only thing I'm out is about $300 in towing, storage fees, and gas to get there and back. It sucks, and I really don't have the money to do it, but you make the most of it I guess. I think my situation turned out much better than other people have experienced with a stolen vehicle.

Lessons learned, obviously don't leave your car running to warm up, no matter how cold it is, or how much you trust your neighbors, you can't trust anyone (I think it was obvious, but we've become so naive to it). We've since purchased a "club" for each of our vehicles and IF it's too cold, we will keep the club on our car while it warms up (if we have to go inside) and keep it on the car at other times we feel it's not safe either.