The theft of my automobile didn't make the headlines. I guess the Michael Peterson and Meg Scott Phipps trials were deemed more important. And face it, car thefts and home burglaries are a commonplace, even in allegedly low crime zones like Raleigh. But I feel that what happened to me is worthy of making the permanent record based on the similar experiences shared by friends and associates. It seems many of us have been victims of the crime no one wants to do something about.
On Labor Day Sunday morning, I walked out of my side door with keys in hand to discover a blank space where my car had been the night before, not 10 feet away from the guest room that was actually occupied with guests. No one heard anything, including my two Chinese Chow-Chows who usually burst into a barking frenzy when the postman stops two blocks away.
I called the police, who arrived promptly. I told the officer I had satellite auto location capability so we should be able to track down the car in an hour or so. He said he would call OnStar and report the theft while showing me the onboard computer in the squad car with all my pertinent data displayed. He said not to worry, well find it.
A few hours later there was no word from RPD or OnStar, so I called the number on the card the officer gave me, naively thinking it was his direct cell phone line. Instead I was disappointed to reach the main number for police dispatch. I asked to speak to my case officer and was told, I've got 400 names here and they're single-spaced and not alphabetized and I can't find the officers name.
With this unforeseen setback in mind, the next morning, Labor Day, I called OnStar myself only to discover they had never been called by RPD to report the theft. I gave them the case number and headed out about my business and called the house an hour or two later to ask my wife Katie if she had heard anything.
Yes, she said, they have found your car. Before I could celebrate she added: The police got into a high-speed chase and the car hit a pole (Im thinking, not good news but still, they have the car) and ...pause... the engine caught on fire. This was not good news indeed. The car was basically new and I'm thinking it will never have the same value and I'm screwed-until it hit me it must be a total loss and I began ruminating about the choices before me: Do I replace it with the same model car or do I want to change to something else...mmmhh, maybe this will work out to my advantage.
Until I talked to Sybil, the claims adjustor with Progressive Insurance. She called me responding to a message I left with my local agent and her local office the moment the car was stolen on Sunday morning. No one was available then, but on Monday Sybil was back in the saddle and in rare form. After accusing me of stealing my own car-she actually did- Sybil lapsed into bureaucratic order-giving that would put former Soviet security police to shame. She announced she was switching on her tape recorder with a tone that suggested she was on to me and the tape would tell the tale. I capitulated to the interrogation after some resistance and answered the questions. After that, she explained that she was sending me an affidavit to fill out and have notarized. Notarized? I said. In her calm, sinister voice she said yes and added: I am enclosing in the package an envelope. You are to enclose all keys you have to your vehicle and return them with the notarized affidavit.
In effect, I screamed at Sybilyou are taking my car from me. In that quiet Gestapo voice, she let me know that there would be an investigation, again hinting that I had stolen my own car. Right about here in the story my agent returned to town and prevented Sybil from taking me to the gas chamber and things settled down until the next day when Sybil announced that the car was not a total loss.
By this time, late Tuesday, Sybil had seen the car but had forbade me from viewing the patient. The next day I was allowed to visit the injured automobile in a junkyard in Southeast Raleigh hidden behind truck depots I never knew existed. As daylight was fading, I accelerated out of primal fear down the South Blount Street Connector and fortunately located what can only be described as Purgatory for deceased cars whose souls had passed into automobile heaven leaving behind their mortal coils of twisted steel, tires akimbo, their headlights dark.
The Jim Croce song about Superman popped in my head as Katie and I tiptoed around two junkyard dogs with pit bull features into the office trailer populated by what looked like bounty hunters and found out where my car was located in the vast graveyard of contorted metal corpses.
Looks totaled to me, I said peering at the crushed right front and the fire damaged engine area.
After our escape in the gloaming I called Sybil and said, How in the name of all that's holy could you say this car is repairable? I'll spare you the details of her response but basically Progressive Insurance wasnt about to pay to replace a new car and that was that.
SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY
After more innuendoes from Sybil that I had stolen my own car, Progressive went on with the repairs at my choice of shops (I didn't trust their offer to have it done at one of their network repair centers, for obvious reasons). To his credit, my agent ran down the headman for Progressive in North Carolina to complain about Sybil but the guy turned out to be a caricature of the glad-handing PR flak that feels your pain and keeps right on sticking it to you. Then I found out that my rental-car allowance in the policy was good for one week. This was getting expensive as well as annoying and time-consuming and I wanted to blame someone besides me and the thief, whom I would never meet and for sure wouldn't have insurance of his own.
So I called the Raleigh City Manager, the man in charge of the police department, to report that this harrowing series of events would not have happened if the police officer that took the initial theft report had done what he said he would do and call OnStar. I also communicated my disbelief that the dispatcher could not locate the officer when I called to verify he had called OnStar. Worse however, was the high-speed chase by the RPD that caused the wreck. I had actually tracked down the other officers involved (it took two weeks) and they basically said they spotted the car after the report from OnStar (the one I called in, by the way) and engaged in a chase that caused a collision and yes, the engine did catch on fire.
The City Manager was nice enough but did not see that the RPD had caused my woes, stating that their actions are protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity so tough luck. And tough luck it has been. At this writing my car is not ready two months after the incident. The repair shop keeps towing it hither and yon to replace this and that, indicating to me that it is never going to be right to drive. I can't receive a depreciated value payment, as the thief has to have his own insurance for that to happen. I have made payments on the car without being able to drive it and I've incurred costs driving a replacement and using Katies leased vehicle for out of town trips. This is eating up her mileage allowance, creating an overage that will have to be paid when the lease is up.
As you find out when disasters strike, many others have suffered the same thing. But that is little solace when it happens to you. But there are bright spots. The Wake County District Attorneys office sent out a Victims Information Report so I could track the process from arrest to, in this case, conviction. They take down personal property losses and include them as required payments from any funds collected from the thief from work relief.
And I confess, I had hidden a spare key in the console of the unlocked car. But I ask you, don't you feel awkward locking your car 10 feet from the door? There are other lessons here as well. Although crime is down, we still live in an unsafe world. And police today are, as the Captain of the Pinafore puts it, exceedingly polite, I suppose from the pressure to be politically correct. But are good manners and a winning smile fighting crime? I prefer to think what happened to me is an exception when it comes to the police. But what is not an exception is the frightening attitude by Progressive Insurance. We have as much to fear from the corporate world as we do from government agencies. Insurance companies, cell phone providers, credit card providers... this is the new fascism that threatens the well-being and sense of security and well-being in our society.
And for those of you with OnStar, ask yourselves this? Wouldn't you call the police before calling OnStar? After all, you can't track down the thieves. Let my experience help. Be sure to call OnStar no matter what the police tell you.
As for the dogs, I forgave them... they usually sleep in the guest room.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
The Brits are often ahead of us when it comes to zany public policy. Parliament is arguing the need to end light pollution so city-dwellers can see the stars at night. The argument that urbanites can simply drive out into the countryside to view the planets is not having an effect on the advocates.
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And be on the lookout for another Soviet-style policy now in place in UK that's sure to come here, the Diversity Directorate that employs 655 agents nationwide to ferret out politically unacceptable speech. The stated mission (core objective) is: to improve the prevention and investigation of racial and violent crime by setting minimum qualitative standards and creating a review process. So far the Directorate is having problems identifying perpetrators but is dedicated to developing anti-hate crime partnerships.
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Writer Tom Wolfe is standing up for Edward Durell Stone, the great architect who defied in his buildings the post-World War 11 socialist Bauhaus school of design imported to the US by German Marxists and rapturously embraced by architects and design schools in the 1950s and 60s. The issue at hand is the imminent destruction of the Stone designed Huntington Hartford Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) on Columbus Circle in New York City. In the Triangle there are actually three Stone buildings, designed in association with my late fathers firm Holloway-Reeves: The Legislative Building (still graceful and functional after 42 years); the Duke School of Music; and the NC Museum of Art, which is actually only 1/3 of the original design as certain nefarious parties conspired to halt its construction in the 1970s arguing the site was too far outside of town. Now, the decision to build the museum on Blue Ridge Road is regarded as visionary. Go to www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12opinion/12wolf.html.
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Finally the New York Times is owning up that it has held on to a Pulitzer for work by reporter Walter Duranty whom they have known was a Soviet agent of influence. Duranty, one of the Soviet regimes useful idiots, wrote a piece in 1932 that praised the communist state but neglected to mention the famine in Ukraine that killed millions due to Kremlin policy.