On Donating A Stolen Car That Wasn't Stolen

My Journey To The Other Side Of The Law And Back Again

Hello and welcome to Inspired By True Events with me, Adam Rockwell! I’m an Oregon Coast-based writer, humorist (sure you are!) and chronic oversharer. This is part of my Offbeat Stories Series!

In the Year Of Our Lord, 2001, I worked at a major US bank in St. Paul, MN. Due to various NDAs, I cannot disclose the name of this US bank, but just trust me, it’s a big, important US bank.

I was a low-level fraud investigator at the time. A small cog in a large transaction risk services department. Account Processor III, but don’t be jealous, my pay was like $12.00 an hour.

My offices were located in a place called “The Operations Center.” It was an enormous building with two floors and very “Office Space”. It was my job to catch forgers and check kiters. If you’ve been following the whole “Chase Glitch” saga, I would’ve been one of the poor saps trying to track you down.

But this story isn’t about my insanely fun job at this US bank. It is about the operations center parking lot.

I don’t know how many people worked in the operations center, but I’m guessing there were more than 100 people. The parking lot was single-level and outdoors.

At the time, we lived in a crazy little one bedroom apartment across the street. The apartment, for some reason, had a real fireplace. Probably 800 square feet, with a wood-burning fireplace. One log heated the entire apartment. What wasn’t to like?

The best thing about the apartment; it was just a few blocks across the street to the bank. I didn’t often drive over to the US bank operations center. I walked, but one day, things changed. We got a second car.

It was a Nissan Sentra. An old, small, black Nissan Sentra. Quite a peppy little car.

One Friday, I decided, “Hey, I have a car and it’s snowing, why not just drive over to the operations center for my 9 a.m. shift?” So, foolishly, I did. I drove my little car over to the operations center and parked in one of the two football-field-sized parking lots. The west side parking lot. I noted in my head the tree I was parked next to. That was the start of my problems.

Later that day, after staring at a Windows 99 computer for about 4 hours under oppressive banks of fluorescent lights, I got a call. It was my partner-in-life, the painter, K.L. Rockwell. She had a great idea:

We’d get out of town for the weekend!! This was before we had a kid or cats and could do things like that on the spur of the moment. It was amazing!

I said, “Sure, I’d love to get out of town. Where to?”

“Duluth?”

Yes, she said Duluth. In the winter. But, you have to understand that in the Upper-Midwest, Duluth, MN, is actually a tourist spot. You heard me right. Plus in the winter, you can get a hotel room for like fifty bucks.

Duluth has a downtown, an uptown, and even the often frozen Lake Superior. My favorite thing in the winter in Duluth? Watching taconite and grain ships come into the harbor under the lift bridge. Amazing!!

This is the Lift Bridge in Duluth where big giant boats go under and all the tourist gather to watch. It doesn’t really have a damn thing to do with this story.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go!” At this point we decided that K.L. would pick me up right from work. I’d just leave my car in the parking lot because it was a guarded parking lot and my new car would be safe there.

So I thought!

K.L. Rockwell pulled up in her beautiful 1997 Burnt Orange Chevy Cavalier and we headed to Duluth. We spent the entire weekend eating lutefisk, smoked salmon, herring, and wandering around the cold dead town.

After a refreshing Monday morning dip in Lake Superior, we headed back to St. Paul early on Monday morning. We made it back to work just in time. 9AM. Many of the cars were covered in snow from the night shift. Including mine, I assumed.

So, I spent the morning going over Suspicious Activity Reports as per usual. I caught a couple of criminals and was feeling good about myself.

This particular bank operations center gave us a one hour break every day for lunch. Unpaid, of course. They’re not made of money after all! Wait…

On my break I typically went home. Or to a great Chinese restaurant across the street. That Monday, I was going home to take a nap. Or so I thought.

I remembered I had left my car in the lot and thought I’d drive it home. I went out to the exact spot I remembered leaving my car, next to my tree marker, and it wasn’t there. It was gone baby, gone.

I remembered exactly where I’d parked it. I was sure of it! On the west side near the back of the building. I remember it perfectly. Heck, I practically have a photographic memory that the internet has since destroyed.

There was only one conclusion I could make. My car had been stolen!! Right out from under the eyes of the vigilant security guards of the operations center!!

I checked the area to make sure that I hadn’t lost my mind, but the spot I knew I’d parked in… it was not in.

So, I marched back into the operations center and told the security team what had happened. My car was missing! It might have been stolen!!

The US bank operations center where I spent half a decade of my life!! When you say it like that, it makes you feel a little sick.

The security guard couldn’t believe his ears! Nobody had ever had their car stolen from the lot before! It was unbelievable. I told him, “There’s a first time for anything, I suppose.”

He drove me around the west-side lot to ensure that I hadn’t misplaced it. At The Mall Of America this happens often he told me.

After we weren’t able to find it, we went back to the main building and they combed through their security footage, but it had been two and a half days. There was probably too much to go through.

The security guard called the police and wrote up an incident report. An incident report that would go to HR. HR is the most hated place in all of corporatedom.

The police showed up and very matter-of-factly wrote up the theft. I signed it and they left. The security guard, Gary, was embarrassed. He couldn’t believe that somebody had stolen one of the operations center’s workers cars out right from under his nose!!

So, I went back to my office and told EVERYBODY what had happened. By this time, I was informing everybody that MY CAR HAD BEEN STOLEN!! Everybody knew!! My Nissan Sentra had been pilfered right out of the lot! If it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody.

I shouldn’t have left it sit there all weekend. I was asking for it.

I sat there at my desk working the rest of the day, knowing I would have to walk the three blocks home!! This whole stolen car thing had ruined an otherwise nice day!

Around 3 PM that day, I was eating some microwavable popcorn and bit into one of those dang un-popped kernels. As the pain shot into my brain… it must’ve shaken something loose.

I remembered. I remembered everything. I had forgotten that on Friday I had driven the two blocks to the Chinese restaurant. When I returned? I parked in the east-side parking lot.

My face has a tendency to go bright red when I’m embarrassed. And I knew EXACTLY where I had parked my car. I don’t know why it had left my mind and why I was so convinced it was in the west side parking lot. The Chinese restaurant had even made a stellar buffet!

There was no good way to deal with this situation. No way to cover my tracks and wriggle out of the humiliation of what I’d done.

There was only one thing I could do:

Fess up.

I went back down to the security station and told them, “I had found my car.” My face must’ve been Crayola-level red.

Gary said, “You didn’t even leave the building. How did you find it?”

I told him, “I remembered I parked it on the other side.”

The HUMANITY!!!!

I told everybody and they had a good laugh at my stupidity! I had also been named the Employee of the Month a month earlier so everybody knew this would take me down a couple of notches. AND MAN, they were right!

I called the police and told them to take my car off the “stolen” vehicle list. I had found it. They told me they would take my Nissan off the list and everything went back to “normal.”

The next day I came into work and my thoughtful co-workers had completely filled my cubicle with balloons and keys. Luckily, there had been an Ashton Kutcher movie named “Dude, Where’s My Car” that had come out a few years earlier.

For the next two years, I was known as “Dude, where’s my car.” 😹 It could’ve been worse, I suppose. It could’ve actually been stolen.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of the story.

A year later, it was time to get rid of the old Nissan. It had given up the ghost.

Luckily, there was a place called “Donate Your Car To Vets!” The advertisement in the paper said they took a car, in ANY condition and the Nissan was definitely in ANY condition.

So I called them up and they showed up with a tow truck. I signed over the pink slip and they disappeared into the Minnesota night with my little Nissan Sentra. I was such a great guy, just donating a junk car like that! Man, I felt good about myself.

An hour later I got a call from “Donate Your Car To Vets!” I was sure they were going to profusely thank me once again for such a spectacular donation to the vets and all their needy animals.

But no. They were calling for another reason.

The guy on the other end of the line said, “Hey, man, we can’t take stolen cars as a donation!”

It had been over a year at this point since, “The Incident At The Operations Center.” It didn’t register for a few minutes in my mind. I told him, “How dare you, good sir, accusing me of donating a stolen car! Why would you say such nonsense?”

And then I remembered. The lost car stolen car report.

I told him that I had REPORTED it stolen, but that… umm… it was recovered.

He ordered me to get the whole situation fixed and pronto! Donating a stolen car was a felony, I was informed by the man from “Donate Your Car To Vets!”

That put a spring in my step.

I immediately called the St. Paul Police Department and informed them that my car, The Nissan Sentra, had indeed been found a year earlier. I told them that I had called and told them that it had been found! What was going on??

According to them, I never called and reported the car as “found.” Who was I to argue, I couldn’t even find my car. I truly was, “Dude, where’s my car.”

Apparently, I’d been driving around my own private stolen car for the past year or more. They NEVER took it off the “stolen car rolls.”

So, after WAY too much paperwork, the thing was sorted, and I was no longer listed as a donator of stolen cars.