The Repossession Adventure

Ok so it turns out its not that good of an idea to give someone a car while loaning them the money for most of the value of the car and only taking 3000 dollars as a downpayment, without checking their credit, or getting any references on the person… whom you’ve never met. Who knew? Ok well you all definitely knew it and I sort of did as well, but I did it anyway. I’m not sure if I though it would be fun to try repossessing a car, or if I just had to much faith in humanity, but it definitely turned out to be a bad idea.

So random ethnic guy from Lancaster drives off with my car on December 8th. The first rolls around and surprise surprise, no proof of insurance or payment has arrived. I text him and he says its in the mail. A week later, still nothing, I give him a call back and my cellphone number is blocked. The freak out begins. I immediately hire a repo guy and wait 2 days before I drive up there myself with Brett. We were a little over prepared since we brought two handguns and an assault rifle as well as a kevlar vest but, better safe than sorry. Turns out this guy had tried to give me as much misleading information as possible. The address on the loan document was an empty foreclosed house he used to live at. We went to the house he had registered the car and discovered, via legal means, that Sachin’s Subaru was in the garage.

We went home that night and made plans to come back up and do some thorough staking out. I think I spent about 4 total days in Lancaster sitting outside this deadbeats house waiting for him to take the car for a drive. He obviously knew what was up because he always kept the car in the garage, and when he would leave he would never stop and get out of the car. He would just drive straight to the McDonalds drive thru, or drop his kid off at school or pick his kid up from school. Other than those three activities I don’t think he ever left the house. A good friend of mine from Lightning actually hooked me up on a free PI who found out that this particular deadbeat was quite awful and had collections all over his jobless self and never answered his phone or the door. It just confirmed to me that this guys intention, from the beginning, was to just pay as little as he could for a nice fast Subaru, and try to hold onto it as long as he could without making any payments. He was like a turtle, driving a stolen STi. Between me and all of my good friends that I convinced to accompany with me to this god forsaken town I think I probably spent 30 hours sitting in a car, pissing in bottles and eating beef jerky. At one point I did have a policeman roll up to me and say that someone had called the police because they thought I was drunk and passed out in my car for the last several hours. I explained my situation and the officer was more than understanding, giving me his direct number and saying “give me a call if it all goes to hell”. The other notable incident would be when we sent someone to go into the guys side yard to see if the car was there and he pulled up right as our man was about to sneak into the brothers side yard.

So anyway, one day my buddy said the PI was going to go and stake out deadbeats house and wait for a chance to snatch the car and that I needed to be there. I met him at the house at noon and around 1:45 the guy went to pick his kid up at school. The PI actually sort of lost him but I drove my old man’s Buick straight to the elementary school since I knew where he was going. I figured this would be another pointless drive as he wouldn’t get out of the car. But since we lost him I parked the Buick and started walking around the school looking for the Subaru with my iPod headphones in and my loud sunglasses on. I’m sure I was fitting right into the whole Lancaster Elementary School scene.

I finally spotted my car and figured out through the dark tinted glass that our deadbeat was sitting in the car in the parking spot. So I’m standing there, cursing, on the phone with the PI telling him that I’m 3 seconds away from walking up to the car and ripping our deadbeat out of it. But I wait, our boy gets out of the car and walks about 10 feet away from it and looks towards the school waiting for his kid. At that point I was fed up with sitting outside this guys house for 10 hours a day 3 times a week so I just walked up to the car with my copied key that I wasn’t sure would work. I get to the door and put the key in. I can’t remember which way to turn it, and the guy is still facing the other direction. I try to unlock it and the key just grinds in the lock and nothing happens. I force the key and the lock grinds and unlocks. I open the door and sit down in the car and look at the guy, who still hasn’t noticed me. The key grinds again as I try turning the ignition and the engine fires up. I rev the car up way too high as I pop it in reverse and deadbeat finally turns around and gives me a perplexed stare, and doesn’t move an inch. I back out slowly and drive off and immediately dial the police department. “Hi, I’m calling to let you know I’ve just repossessed a vehicle…?”

I had looked forward to making that phone call for weeks. It was a good day. I drove the Subaru home after filling it up with oil and came back up a few hours later to pickup my Dad’s Buick.

I learned so much this month besides “Don’t loan random people money who don’t have any intention of paying you back”. The biggest lesson I learned really was how good it felt to know that my friends were there when I needed them. These days it seems like we all have such separate lives because we all have jobs and are extremely busy, but when shit hit the fan with this and I needed people to accompany me to a shitty ass neighborhood to sit in a car for hours on end, my friends were there for me. It’s a weird thing for me because I’ve never really had to rely on my friends for anything serious like this, but it felt good to know I had people supporting me. Ever since this happened I vowed I would always be the same to my friends, whenever they need me no matter what, they will come first. I also learned how lucky I am to have a girl in my life that understands when I need to handle my business and her willingness to help me out even when its a boring, waste of time, potentially dangerous activity. I’m thankful my friends never let it come down to my girl having to accompany me to Lancaster but she definitely is going to be the person who will always be there for me no matter how many times she tells me what I’m doing is a bad idea, and I do it anyway.

Oh and for all those people who asked me why I would do something like this, a big factor was my old man telling me he thought it was a good idea. I usually listen to the old man. I think I learn to be a little less trusting than he is.

Check out the video for what happens when me and Brett have been sitting inside a car for 8 hours straight.