I’m Not Just A Crime Writer, I’m Also A Victim!

 Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In fact, I know you’ve heard it before. Because I’ve told this one before. More than once.

I hate true crime. Writing. TV. Podcasts. All of it. (I've written about it here. And here. Aaaaand also here.)

I hate the genre. I hate the stories. I hate the style. I hate how it uses the genuine pain of actual human beings as fodder for content.

And as of last Thursday morning, I have another reason to hate it. You see, once again, I am a victim of crime.

Have you seen me anywhere?

That's right.

After FOUR different break-ins, lucky number five was successful.

My wife and I were coming home from a quick getaway (no pun intended), waiting for a taxi to the airport, when we got the news that my 2021 GMC Sierra XLT had been stolen. My mother had borrowed the truck while we were out of town to haul some things, gone out that morning to do some more hauling before picking us up at the airport, and found my truck gone.

My truck had been stolen from the parking lot of Mom's senior living complex. She checked with her complex's security office and made sure the truck hadn't been towed.

Nope.

She checked with maintenance, which had been resurfacing the parking lot, on the odd chance they moved it for some reason.

Un-uh.

So she called us right away, then called the local constabulary to report the truck stolen. For our part, we logged onto our insurance account to report the truck stolen there as well.

Then the adjuster called right as we were about to board our flight home.

Nothing like trying to wrap that sort of call AT THE GATE, and then spend the two-plus hours of the flight home trying NOT to think about what's waiting for you once you land.

Once we landed, we talked with the police officer assigned to write up the police report. And this is what we immediately learned:

1. Thanks to current key fob technology, the thieves who made off with my truck likely needed less than a minute to replicate the frequency of the fob where it hung on a hook in my parents' place and break into/start my truck.

Gee, turns out it's harder to steal a vehicle that still uses an actual ignition/door key.

And so our education on how technology levels the playing field in favor of car thieves began. 

2. If your vehicle has Onstar (ours did), the second thing most thieves do when stealing vehicles like ours is to disable the Onstar/onboard GPS.

Time to do so?

Another minute.

3. We live in Washington State, and had a "Good to Go" pass that allowed us to pay to use HOV/HOT lanes on the freeway. My brilliant wife had the idea to our passion line annd see if there had been any activity on our pass, and sure enough, there was. From the same day we reported the truck stolen came two auto-photos taken of our truck on one of our local freeways. 

We forwarded those photos to the police and then spoke to the reporting officer again when she called us to inform us that because of the way the legislation creating the Good to Go system was written, law enforcement was not allowed to use photo evidence such as what we collected from the system to help identify/apprehend the person(s) who were driving our stolen truck on a public thoroughfare supported by OUR TAX DOLLARS.

Ahhh remember how stealable these bad boys were?

I was reminded by the above information (not for the first time, like I said, this isn't my first crime victim rodeo) of the old saying that "a conservative is just a liberal who has been mugged."

(Yeah, STILL a liberal, thanks.)

4. It turns out the GMC Sierra/Chevy Silverado (Same truck, different branding) is the Honda Accord of the 2020s.

For those of you too young to get the reference, throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, year in, year out, the most frequently stolen vehicle in the United States was the Honda Accord.

This fact becomes far less surprising once you know another interesting fact about Hondas of the period: the manufacturer only made about five different keys for them. 

That's right: many Accord keys were interchangeable.

In retrospect it's amazing that more Accords weren't stolen!

Both of my babies looked like this one.

I didn't actually own an Accord (my brother did, and there's a story there, but I am doing my best to not digress with this particular post, so another time, another post.).

I did, however, own two Jeep Cherokees: first a 1996 Jeep Cherokee Sport, and then I followed it up with a 2001 Jeep Cherokee Sport.

Is it surprising that these popular SUVs were the most stolen/broken into vehicles of the 1990s and early 00s? It shouldn't be.

Would it surprise you to know that each of my Cherokees was broken into twice? I lost four stereos and the same number of driver side back seat windows. The first two times any CDs I had in the Jeep were stolen as well.

One of the stolen stereos even had a detachable faceplate (remember those?), and I always made a point of
removing the faceplate and taking it with me. 

Always.

In fact, I was carrying my expensive stereo's expensive faceplate with me when I  got back to my Jeep and found my window smashed and my expensive stereo gone.

My deductible was high enough for replacing that stereo and window that I believe my insurance company at the time gave me a whopping $75.00 for my trouble.

Needless to say, the replacement for my expensive stereo with the detachable faceplate did NOT have a detachable face.

The thieves must have been getting younger. This time they didn't bother stealing my CD visor sleeve
(remember those?)

The last time my 2001 Cherokee was broken into it was clearly done by someone who had been watching too many action movies.

I say this because I came out to go to work and found my Jeep had once again been broken into. No smashed window this time. Instead, they had used some sort of pry bar to pop the driver door lock (that was an expensive fix), and then had stripped the housing from the steering column in an apparent attempt to hotwire my Jeep.

Had they only looked up from where they sat trying to get my Jeep to start, they might well have seen the window sticker prominently placed to announce the presence of the anti-theft kill switch that year make and model of Cherokee came equipped with, and realized they were wasting their time.

And yet they weren't done. They also used a big bladed screwdriver to try and punch into my ignition (like I said: someone had been watching waaaaaaay too many action movies!). 

How do I know this?

Because the genius(es?) who tried to make off with my Cherokee left the screwdriver behind. Craftsman. Go figure.

One of these. I still have it somewhere out in my garage.

My deductible for this little adventure was $1,000, and we're talking 2008 dollars, and I wasn't senior enough to be making all that much as a teacher, so to pay for the repairs I took one of the most soul-killing ghost-writing gigs imaginable (This, too is a story for another time.).

During the intervening eighteen years I have been waiting for someone to try to tell me that property crimes are practically victimless. 

So far, no takers.

The notion that someone might profit from my own run-ins with the local criminal element, to the tune of mining my experiences for the details for a podcast, a book, or even an article of course makes my blood boil.

As I noted previously in one of my earlier posts about true crime while addressing the collective pain of other victims:

These are real stories. This is literally "True Crime." I find it in no way entertaining. There's a human cost here that is painful to recall. And for me there's no escaping it.

And that's why I neither read nor write True Crime.

True then. True now.

See you in two weeks.

Steal this truck (back)!