Now, I’m sure there is a statistic out there that can give you an idea of the chances that you’ll recover your car, but I can tell you that both of the cars that have been stolen from me have been found. One was reported abandoned within the week, and the other (my Chevy Suburban) took a few months, but eventually I got the call from the police telling me the good news and asking if I wanted to press charges.

The police does not actively look for stolen cars, but they do have teams that dedicate themselves to finding stolen cars by keeping a lookout for suspicious activities that may signal that a car on the road is not with their rightful owner and detecting theft patterns. There is some technology that some departments have integrated that scans license plates automatically that can detect stolen vehicles.

However, not all patrol cars are equipped with this and instead rely on the officer to run the plates when there is suspicious activity.

Typically, though, the same thief or groups of thieves are responsible for the thefts in a single area. When they get pulled over, usually they can find master keys, shaved keys, tools, and other items used in theft.

Here’s a story I watched recently. A pretty crazy recovery!

How The Recovery Works

When a car is reported stolen, the police may first go to a suspect who is either someone that they have been keeping an eye on (a repeat thief), or someone who the victim claims may be responsible. The license plate and the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) get entered into a national databank and the police around the county or local area will get a notification. The license plate number also gets entered in the Automated Plate Readers that send out an alert if the plates match that of a stolen vehicle.

Still, the chances of getting your car back get slimmer as the days go on. According to the FBI, 57.08 percent of cars are recovered in the first day and 79% are recovered during the first six days. (Source)

Sadly, this means that after that, the odds get lower and lower.

The Most Stolen Rides

Some of the car models that top the list on the most sought-after by thiefs are the Honda Civic, Ford pickup trucks, Toyota Camrys, and Toyota Accords. If you think that you’re safe because your car is an older model, think again! These cars are less likely to stand out on the road and they’re good for a short crime or drug haul.

Usually these cars get spotted on the road because of visible damage or the driver may seem a bit lost when it comes to using the car with things like the seat not being adjusted properly, breaking unexpectedly or too hard at once, or pressing the gas a little too fast. You know, the typical things we do when we drive a car that’s not our own.

These cars also may have broken windows or door handles, or the people riding the car may be too young. Some experienced officers can also detect things like when a car is evading a patrol car or by backing into parking spaces and removing the front license plates.

When someone steals something from your car, it is simply called theft or burglary. If the car was broken into, you say that your car was burglarized. This is simply terrible and demeaning and can cause some serious damage.

From things like important bank information, to losing important things like a laptop, cell phone, or expensive sunglasses, this can lead to some serious losses financially. In one experience, someone stole my expensive tenor saxophone from the trunk of my car, along with my spare tire and some tools while I was parked buying groceries at a Food 4 Less in Southern California.

Though my car has been broken into some other times, I had to provide a witness account to a police investigation recently while traveling up to Northern California for some courses.

I had stopped at a rest area to pee and grab a coffee. While I was at the vending machines, I saw a girl running toward her car and as I worked my way back, I saw that there was a guy standing by my driver’s side window (I could see his shoes under my car from where I was standing). Growing suspicious, I walked up to my car and he got into his car which was parked next to mine.

The car next to that one had a broken passenger-side backseat window broken and I figured that they had undergone a minor accident while parking or something. It wasn’t until the car between us left that a girl came up to my window and asked me if I had seen anybody near her car. That’s when she told me what happened: someone broke the window and went to steal something from her car. It was her laptop bag that was missing.

She was by herself and seemed to be running around asking everybody if they had seen anybody breaking into her Subaru, but nobody had seen anything. I started searching around for some tape just in case she needed it to reseal her car window at least for the drive back, but I couldn’t find anything. That’s when I remembered the suspicious guy standing by my window and told her about it.

She said that the guy seemed nice and offered his cell phone in case she needed it, so she didn’t think it had been him –but you never really know. It sucks.

She had to wait for CHP at a rest area in the middle of nowhere desert of central California (by Bakersfield), by herself, with a missing laptop.

From Personal Experience, File a Report

Most people want to just move on with their lives and forget about it, but filing a police report can really save your butt when it comes to bank fraud or if you discover that something very important went missing later on. If that ends up being the case, you at least have a record showing that the car was broken into and have  an official record to prove it.

When my car was stolen, the thieves ended up taking a checkbook and managed to get Chase bank to cash a check for $500 with a fake signature. Thanks to having a record on file, I was able to recover the money a bit faster, even though I believe a bank is supposed to cover you from fraud especially when the signature was extremely off from my own on a check.

The thing here is that this can happen just about anywhere. Grocery stores, mechanic shops, and even at the gas station while you’re only ten feet away from your car! Experienced thieves can break a window, grab something valuable, and walk away casually.

Another Experience Outside a BJ’s Restaurant

During a staff meeting at my old job, while we were all inside, someone broke into a coworkers car and stole his GPS right from the windshield. Apparently that’s all they took, but we all took a lesson from that. Back then, people would leave their GPS devices stuck to the windshields and it was definitely a bad call. The neighborhood was supposed to be very safe.

Some Tips and Tricks to Deter Theft

Hide or remove valuables from plain sight because if a thief wants it and they see it, they will take it.

Be careful where you park. Though a theft can happen anywhere and even in plain daylight, you can lower the odds of having something stolen if you park somewhere that is well-lit and not hidden somewhere where nobody passes by.

Think again about what you do with your car alarm. This is something that I’ve thought about quite a lot, and that’s that a car alarm is the most boy-who-cried-wolf thing ever: it always goes off and its never something serious, so we just hear it and shut it off. One of these times it might be for real.

If something does get stolen though, you should take inventory of what you lost and file a police report right away. If you had valuable information that could identify you or your financial information, be sure to contact those institutions right away as well.

Things like these are social security cards, credit cards, checkbooks, bank statements, and IDs.

If your window got broken into, or if your keyhole/door got broken into, you’ll have to repair that as well before you hit the road again.

Car thieves cause a lot of damage mentally as well. I have actually become kind of paranoid when it comes to taking my car anywhere I’m not familiar with, making sure that I carry my laptop with me if I’m coming from work, or hiding most of my stuff under a jacket or under my seats.

The car that I’m driving is kind of giving me peace of mind as well, since I doubt that there is much value in a 20 year old big guzzler, though this car has one attempted robbery and has been stolen once.

If you know who stole your car, you should report it to your local police department immediately to attempt to recover it. Since it is your property, you can technically just walk up to your car, get in, and drive away like normal. However, if this type of situation can put you in danger, you should seek help from law enforcement.

Many times, we try to play detective and figure out who stole the car by through Facebook, witness reports, or by looking through our security cameras. I have heard many frustrating stories about this, when you know who stole your car but can do absolutely nothing about since the police doesn’t seem very interested or can’t seem to help out.

It’s understandable that they become numb to the whole thing since the chance of recovering something that was stolen may never be recovered, or that they need to work with the evidence you provide. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in this and reasons why you won’t be able to prove that the person you suspect did in fact steal your car.

Things to Watch Out For

• The police will have no proof if the suspect was not caught driving the car or somehow claiming ownership of it
• The person can claim that you let them borrow the car
• The police may be able to recover the car for you, but the person who stole it may not be found (even if they left traceable stuff in your car!)

All of these things sound hard to believe, but they happen. You have to document everything and be able to prove that the other person is guilty. But you also have to think why you want to charge somebody for theft –did they damage the car, remove parts, or stole things you had inside? If so, it might be worth it to pursue the case. Think long and hard about this, since most of the time it has not been worth it to me!

When my car got stolen and recovered, I found that the thieves took the entertainment system, CDs, my GPS locator, ripped buttons from the control module, and slashed my seats just for the heck of it and even bumped the car somewhere since it also had cosmetic damage. Oh, and there were things missing from under the hood.

Since the police recovered it while someone was driving it, they arrested the guy and I got a visit from the police to ask what I wanted to do about it. I told them that I wanted to charge the guy with theft and made a list of all of the damages. A while later, I got a letter from the DA saying that the guy would have to pay me that money that he caused in damages, lost wages, and bank fraud (I had left my checkbook in the car).

Here’s What You Should Do:

1. Gather all of your information and evidence
2. Call your local PD with the information
3. Decide if you want to charge the person, and through what procedure

I want to reemphasize that you should strongly consider if this it is worth the hassle, stress, and money (and time, and, and, and…) associated with this. As some of you guys know, I have been through this several times and I know for a fact that it is not worth it to me.

And I’m not talking about the paperwork only.

After something like that happens, you just feel weird about it. I don’t know if you guys agree with me or not, but being taken advantage of like that and getting back a car that has been modified or destroyed just makes me feel violated.

If I were you, all I would be concerned about is getting what I can back, attempt to recover some money in damages through the DA or something, move on with the repair process, and getting back on the road.

If you’re one of the lucky ones that got the car back in one piece and with no damages, even better! Don’t try to get back at the person who stole it, but make sure that it gets reported with all of the information that you have. If the police tell you that there is nothing they can do, be sure to get a second opinion, but also understand that if you are considering that getting back at the person who did this will make you feel better, it will not.

With extremely easy access to trace suspects nowadays with security camera footage, GPS locators, apps, Facebook, Instagram, etc., it might be fun to try to play detective for a while and hope to end up in one of those viral videos or photos where you car gets recovered and the person gets shamed for being a thief on social media, but I think its best to move on.

Best of luck with this!