Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I once had an old beater car that I had been using for a food delivery job that I was no longer working at. So the car was sitting for over a year with a dead battery, in plain sight in a parking lot between two busy apartment buildings. The registration was expired - non operational. One day I got an email from a neighbor telling me that my car door was open. I checked and sure enough the door was open. I wondered if I had left the car unlocked. Anyway nothing was missing and I made sure that the car was locked up.
About one month later I came out of my apartment to find the car door open again. This time there was evidence of a car burglary. The steering column was pull apart. I guess they tried to hotwire a car with a dead battery. Stuff that was missing: A plastic tote box filled with food compliments from my former job. The type of stuff the restaurant gave away free to customers. The thief literally saved me the trouble of throwing that stuff away. LOL. Also missing was a $2 dashboard compass. Other stuff was taken, but nothing that I cared about. Basically just junk. What was not taken: A couple dollars of coins, a tool box with about $50 of tools and jumper cables. Which they could have used to jumpstart the car. LOL.
The idiots tried to steal the car one more time after that. Nothing was missing at that time. I had cleared everything out of the car. But they left some of their homemade car burglary tools behind in the car. These guys must have been the dumbest car thieves who have ever lived. If they had managed to actually steal the car, license plate readers would have picked up the expired tags right away.
This is hilarious! They could have jump started the car - too funny. So weird they didn't steal the tools and other stuff like that. You just wonder what they were thinking or why they were there.
I once had someone break into the trunk of my car when I was working in Oakland, CA. They stole my tackle box, fishing rods and a pair of old sneakers! I had been planning to go fishing after work and had to cancel that. Not worth a claim with the insurance, just had to replace the lock which had been punched out.
OMG, they stole old sneakers! Maybe they were collectibles.
We were in Santa Maria, CA, for my brother's wedding. While on a side trip to Point Sal, someone broke into my car and stole the stereo (not even a nice one and destroyed the dash in the process). I had a couple of tampons stashed in the glove box and those were taken too. Maybe the thief was female?
It's still a bad idea. What happens when somebody else drives your car for some reason? Do you take the paperwork out of your wallet and give in to every person who drives your car? If not, if they get pulled over and are driving your car and there is no registration and insurance in the car, your car is going to get towed.
The only good reason I can find not to leave your paperwork in your car, is some reports that car thieves have driven to the victimes home and used the garage door opener to gain enterey. That seems like a long shot to me. But if you are really concerned about it, a better solution would be not to leave your garage door opener in the car.
Interestingly, I started keeping the garage door opener to my apt building's underground garage on my key rings, because I can use it to get in and out of my building when I walk my dog. So, fortunately, they didn't get the opener.
Dumb thing was, the garage door had been broken for about a month, so the thieves were able to just drive into the garage, and steal from our cars. Mine was the only one with broken windows, but others had things stolen out of their vehicles. These thieves at least checked to see if they were locked first.
It also appeared that they only targeted older vehicles not likely to have alarms, which was the case.
Never realized how fortunate I am to live in an area that you could leave valuables and keys in your vehicle and not have to worry. Looks like the rest of the world is a piece of crap.
Jim
It wasn't a successful theft, but I have a super odd story...
Living in a pretty normal and quite neighborhood at the time with exactly one car parked on the entire street (everything else was in driveways) my completely beaten 1989 S10.
Late one Sunday night in the fall I just couldn't sleep. I had the windows open and was just laying in bed praying to finally get to sleep before I had to get up for work at 5:30. It was something like 3am at this point so I was just about to give up. Then I hear a car pull up to the house. It's trash night so I think maybe it's a garbage digger looking for something "good". I hear the car for awhile longer than I felt I should have...
I lean up out of bed and look out the window just in time to see a dude in a hoodie go back to the trunk of a somewhat modern E class Benz and produce a tire iron. I wait around to see what he's going to do... He attempts to smash the window of my literally free truck (buddy paid $400 for it, drove it for 2 years, and gave it to me) to steal the $99 radio. The windows does not shatter. I yell "Hey!" out the window and say nothing else. Dude very calmly looks around very slowly. Slowly puts the iron back in his trunk. Drives slowly up the street. Stops, signals his turn, and continues on.
It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Sitting 10 feet from the truck was my extremely nice car with about 10 grand of car audio in it. Why he picked the literally valueless S10 that had been painted with a Wagner fence painting gun on sitting torn up Z28 wheels with the $99 Awia radio is something I'll never understand. Never mind being just totally cool about his exit.
Whoa, that is weird. Unless, he was only targeting vehicles that probably wouldn't have alarms. I don't understand their thinking.
Never realized how fortunate I am to live in an area that you could leave valuables and keys in your vehicle and not have to worry. Looks like the rest of the world is a piece of crap.
Jim
Yeah, this is the first time in my long life I've ever had a vehicle broken into. But, it appears to be getting worse and worse at least in the SF Bay Area.
Mid to late 80s someone once tried to steal my mom’s 84 Dodge Diplomat hubcaps. They didn’t have the key tool.
I work at a hospital and employees have a parking tag to hang from the rear view mirror to use in the employee parking tower. Some employees were having their cars broken into and the parking tag was stolen. Received a hospital wide notice to keep the tag hidden unless in the employee garage. Many don’t hide their tags. I keep mine hidden.
Live in south Louisiana and people will hang Mardi Gras beads from the mirror. Why would someone steal cheap plastic beads thrown off parade floats for free? But they do steal them.
If they get in my car and dig around they’ll find a tire pressure gauge, hidden parking tag, clip on polarized lenses, small air compressor, first aid kit, roadside emergency kit, two umbrellas, car cane, tissue, windshield shade, and a few CDs.
I've had 2 different vehicles broken into. With the first one, it was in my little town. I never locked my vehicles then. They took a paper bag that was sitting in the front seat. Contents: Old underwear and pair of socks, toothbrush and comb. I'd taken it out of my plane for some reason, and it was there in case I got weathered in somewhere and had to spend the night. I'll bet they were disappointed when they discovered what was in the bag.
The other one was when we were spending the night in a Denver hotel around Thanksgiving. We'd been Christmas shopping and had a couple thousand $$ worth of gifts in the trunk, but they broke out the gunner's side window. We'd already carried all the gifts inside that wouldn't fit in the trunk, so all they took was the owner's manual from the glove compartment. Had they been smart, once inside they could have simply pulled the rear seat backs forward for full access to the trunk! My insurance paid for the window and gave me $75 for the manual (in a nice leather pouch).
This is hilarious! They could have jump started the car - too funny. So weird they didn't steal the tools and other stuff like that. You just wonder what they were thinking or why they were there.
Looking back on it, it is hilarious, but at the time it was pretty irritating. They seemed very determined to steal my car. The tools were in the storage compartment behind the seat. It would have been slightly difficult for them to reach the tools without first getting out of the car and folding the seat forward, but I could reach them from the front seat, so they probably could have too. They seemed to just grab whatever was easiest to grab, without even looking at it. The car was in a well lighted area in a parking lot and visible from probably about 30 apartment balconies, which usually had people on at least some of them. I think they were just using a slim jim to get into the car quickly, then working inside the car. I think they were getting spooked when people came by, and then they would take off fast. They probably weren't sure if they were spoted or not, or if somebody called the cops or not. But from my experience nobody in that neighborhood would call the police. But when stuff did happen, there was always lots of witnesses who cooperated with the cops.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Stuff that was missing: A plastic tote box filled with food compliments from my former job. The type of stuff the restaurant gave away free to customers. The thief literally saved me the trouble of throwing that stuff away. LOL. Also missing was a $2 dashboard compass. Other stuff was taken, but nothing that I cared about. Basically just junk. What was not taken: A couple dollars of coins, a tool box with about $50 of tools and jumper cables. Which they could have used to jumpstart the car. LOL. 
