swamp_rat
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• River Ridge, LA, USA |
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• Registered on 8/3/2003 |
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• 37 posts |
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 Posted:1/27/2004 09:26 |
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JEEP DOUBLE JEOPARDY
After her Jeep stolen three days earlier is found ransacked in a furniture store's parking lot, a Tulane student waits nearby for police to come and investigate -- and the car gets stolen again.
Tuesday January 27, 2004
By Michael Perlstein
Staff writer
The insurance company was perplexed. Police officers, including grizzled veterans, were confounded. Even the victim of last week's crime within a crime struggled to explain how her car was stolen twice in three days -- the second time as she waited nearby for a police officer.
"I was crying because my car was gone, but eventually I had to laugh because it was all so unbelievable," said Maggie Ardolino, a Tulane University senior.
Ardolino's misadventure began on the evening of Jan. 17 when she and five girlfriends piled into her 1998 Jeep Cherokee to get a bite to eat. When the group left a hamburger joint on Esplanade Avenue about 8 p.m., they were shocked to find Ardolino's Jeep missing from its parking space less than a block away from the restaurant.
"At first, we didn't really believe it, so we walked around the neighborhood just to make sure we didn't forget where we parked," Ardolino said.
Sure enough, the car was gone, and Ardolino promptly called the New Orleans Police Department to report the theft. Ardolino's parents began filling out insurance paperwork, and Ardolino came to terms with the likelihood that the Jeep, her high school graduation gift, was gone forever.
Three days later, however, Ardolino was treated to another surprise -- a welcome one -- when a Tulane security officer called to tell her that the car had been found in the parking lot of a St. Claude Avenue furniture store. The store's manager had notified Tulane after noticing the Jeep's parking sticker, Ardolino said.
"I thought I was pretty lucky," she said. "It was like a miracle."
Ardolino got a friend to give her a ride to the furniture store, where she found her Jeep Cherokee sitting next to a rear loading dock. The front end was wrecked, and the interior had been ransacked; missing was a CD player and Carnival beads that had been hanging from the rearview mirror. But at least she would have her Jeep back.
"First, I called my parents. Then I called the police, who said they would send somebody out," Ardolino said. "I had a key, but I didn't actually go inside because I didn't want to interfere with the insurance company or the police."
It was about 3 p.m., and furniture store employees offered to keep them company, so Ardolino and her friend waited. And waited. And waited. At about 6 p.m., the store closed, the sun went down and, suddenly, the prospect of waiting for an officer grew more daunting.
"Then, when two guys started walking toward us, we got really scared," Ardolino said. "We didn't know if they were coming for the car or for us or what. So we left and drove around the block."
When they returned a few minutes later, the Jeep was gone.
"That was when I freaked out a little bit. I had been pretty composed up until then, but that was pretty much my breaking point," Ardolino said.
With no reason to continue waiting in a dark, empty lot, Ardolino went to the 5th District police station to report the bizarre chain of events. When she got there, officers couldn't find a report of the initial theft, so she found herself trying to explain her odyssey from the beginning.
"It's unfortunate, and it's certainly not a scenario that happens very often," police spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said. "We understand the inconvenience. In this case, a double inconvenience."
Defillo said the crime will be recorded as two car thefts and one short-lived recovery. He said detectives will investigate, but, as in most auto thefts, the criminals are not likely to be caught. In this case, Defillo said, detectives can't even determine if they are looking for one set of thieves or two.
"The most important thing is that she did not confront anyone," he said. "Personal safety is paramount. A car can always be recovered or replaced."
Ardolino said she is resigned to bumming rides and doing a lot more walking until her graduation in May. She said she will wait before she buys a replacement car, but when she does, "I know I'm going to have an anti-theft system from now on."
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