Imagine, if you have the stomach for it, that your car's been stolen. The police find it, but instead of returning it to you, they put it up for auction.
That's what happened to an elderly woman in Colorado recently. And it's only by chance that she managed to get it back.
The Drive reports that it all started on June 1 when the Ford Crown Victoria belonging the one Mary Antrim, 80, was stolen outside her home in Pueblo, Colorado – a couple of hours south of Denver, past Pikes Peak.
Four days after reporting it stolen, she got a call from the police department in nearby Colorado Springs saying that they'd found her car, but impounded it as evidence in an attempted robbery in which it was involved. Antrim says she called repeatedly over the course of the following five weeks asking when she could pick it up, explaining that she needed it to get to get doctor's appointments. But she never got an answer. Instead, she found her Crown Vic listed online in as going up for auction in September.
"I was dumbfounded," Antrim said. "I thought how in the world can the car go from being on hold for evidence and now it's on hand and being ready to go to auction. I couldn't believe that."
The Colorado Springs Police Department claimed that Antrim was notified by mail on July 7 that he car was ready to be picked up, but the letter that finally arrived was postmarked July 11 – the same day that the local news station KOAA News 5 called the police seeking answers. With a little pressure from the station, Antrim was able to retrieve her car, who waived the $180 fee it initially tried to charge her. But we can't help but wonder how many situations like this, out of the public eye, don't end up resolved as positively.
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