Randy's '57 Chevy Wagon, safe again.

A Ham Lake, MN man had the unpleasant surprise of finding (err…not finding) his yellow ’57 Chevy wagon missing from his garage. It’s owner Randy had been in progress restoring the car over the course of about 5 years.

Unbeknownst to him, the wagon was the victim of right place, wrong time. Police had been on the tail of another man driving a stolen pickup truck, and to lose them he ditched the truck and hid out in a garage; the very same garage that the ’57 was sitting.

What are the chances? In a perfect world, collector cars, hot rods etc would be under lock and key, only to be unleashed for traffic free blasts down the interstate and cool evenings at the local cruise-in. Unfortunately that isn’t our world; vehicle thefts in Randy’s home state of MN average over 23 per day. Eventually, one lucky thief gets one really nice car, even if he wasn’t expecting to.

Despite the bad endings that many stolen auto’s receive, the wagon survived the theft. Better yet, it did so with only minor damage, and was located by St Paul police and returned to its rightful home. With the extra time he’ll have on his hands, I wonder if the thief is sitting in jail, contemplating stealing a slightly more subtle car next time?