My sister's car got stolen...
... several times, actually, since it is a white Vauxhall Nova. Now, the first time, her boyfriend (now husband) woke up to hear someone revving a car engine, realised it was the Nova, and went to wake her. Too slow, she's already down the stairs and chasing them up the street with a trolley jack handle. The would-be car thieves had been thwarted by that fiendish mechanical device, the manual choke.

The second time, it was some junkie couple, who managed to drop their house keys in the driver's side footwell. With their address on the keyfob. "Ah", said the policeman who came round, "aha, him. Right, will you be staying up for a while? I'll be back in half an hour..."

The third time, though, someone actually broke into their flat and stole the car keys. They ignored the iPod and the digital camera, and took the keys. They must have then wandered around the carpark plipping the alarm until something woke up, and realised that out of everything in the car park (including a couple of MR2s, a Subaru Impreza, and a Honda NSX) they had stolen the keys for the J-reg Nova. Now, my sister is very fond of her wee Nova, and it would be quite an understatement to say she was very upset at this. We phoned the police (she was working near where I live, so she was staying at mine), various scrapyards (thieves often steal cars simply to weigh them in), and finally the local paper. Nothing. The police said that if they went into the town centre or put petrol in, the ANPR would catch them - but they didn't show up. The car only had a wee drop of petrol left after driving about 400 miles on a tank, so we figured they couldn't have gone far.

They hadn't.

A week later, my sister and her husband found the car parked up at some flats about half a mile away, undamaged but with the stereo and a couple of CDs missing. That was right about when the newspapers started phoning constantly, looking for their follow-up to the story.
www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2259432/Im-Miss-CARPLE.html
www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2009/02/20/newsstory12667952t0.asp
(gordonjcp, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 14:51, 1 reply)

Awesome
Bloody well done her! And manual chokes - makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...

*click*
(Good old boy just like yer grandma!, Sat 24 Apr 2010, 1:21, closed)