Missing More Than a Month, Stolen Car Yields a Trophy

A Hartford woman got back some prized property from her stolen car, even though it had been missing more than a month and she and her husband had written it off as a loss.

Read on.

At 3:10 p.m. Tuesday, a 19-year-old Waukesha woman was arrested for possession of stolen property and obstructing an officer after the car she was driving turned out to be stolen.

She was stopped by a Wauwatosa patrol officer for speeding and illegally passing on the right in the 2400 block of Wauwatosa Avenue. A records check of the VIN number of the 2012 Toyota Camry came back with a hit that it had been stolen in Milwaukee nearly a month and a half before.

The woman gave police her sister’s name, which was discovered only when the car was searched and her own driver’s license was found. She swore she did not know the car was stolen and said she thought it belonged to her boyfriend.

When contacted, he too swore he didn’t know it was stolen and said he had rented it from a man who ran some sort of “support group” in Milwaukee.

When he was contacted, he hung up on the police.

The original owner of the car, a Hartford man, said he had taken his new car to the dealer, Heiser Toyota, for its first scheduled service, and it had been stolen out of the service lot.

He reported the loss on Aug. 3, and a week later received a check from his insurer for the full value of a new car, meaning the one police had found now belonged to the insurance company.

One thing, though, he wondered about. By any chance, were his wife’s golf shoes still in the car?

They were, and police placed them in safekeeping for him.