I moved to Northern Michigan in 2013. Last August I went back down to Detroit to the VA hospital for my annual checkup. After leaving the hospital, I went out to lunch at the El Rancho restaurant on Vernor and Dragoon. It's a nice little neighborhood restaurant I've been to many times. I considered the area safe, at least in the daytime. I parked in a fenced lot behind the restaurant at 2:30 in the afternoon. Right across the street is a large mexican market/Mercado, with people everywhere. After eating lunch, I came out of the restaurant, and stared in disbelief at the empty parking space where I had parked my van! I'm not a big phone person, so I had left my phone in the van. I went back in the restaurant in shock. The manager called 911 and handed me the phone. The 911 operator told me I had to come into the precinct and make a report. I told her I was 200 miles from home, with no transportation and no phone and no way to get to the precinct or even call a cab. She said the protocol was that I had to come into the station and make a report...and then she hung up on me! Luck was on my side. Just then a cop walked into the restaurant to see the owner about some other business. I told him what happened, and he immediately called in the vehicle description, and I heard the dispatcher repeat it out over the radio. Then he drove me down to the fourth precinct on Fort street. I had to wait behind four other people making reports. Finally the desk officer called me up to the desk to make my report. After playing 20 questions, he finished taking the report and said I could go. I said, "Go where. I'm 200 miles from home with no wheels". He turned me over to a nice black lady at a nearby desk. She was some kind of community service person. She asked me if there was anyone I could call. I told her I had a brother in the Brighton/Hartland area, but I didn't know his number. All my phone numbers were in my phone, like most people these days. She Googled his name and address and got his number. My brother is old fashioned, and still has a landline phone, and by the grace of god he answered it, with the caller ID showing an unknown number. He got down there to get me in about an hour and a half. We were just backing out of the parking lot, when the black lady came running out, and said they had found my van. We went back inside. The desk officer was on the phone and said they found my van on East Willis and Elmwood, with the ignition and the door lock punched. They said the wheels were on it and it might be drivable, and it was being towed to Executive Towing on east Hildale. He called the impound yard and handed the phone to me. It was now 5:45, and the guy said I would have to get it the next day, because they were getting ready to close. Spent the night at my brothers, and he drove me back deep into the bowels of Detroit the next morning to pickup my van. They wanted $230 cash, no checks or charges to release it. I paid and we went out into the yard to get the van. We were able to start it with a screwdriver, but the brake pedal went almost to the floor and there was no fluid in the reservoir. It appears the tow truck driver just put a tow hook on the frame rail and crushed the brakeline. I drove it out of there carefully and stopped at the first auto parts store on East Davison and got some brake fluid, which dripped out soon. Anyway, I managed to drive back up north carefully with little or no brakes. They had taken my Honda scooter along with the 2 by 12 plank I used to load it. They also took my mountain bike, camera, GPS and many tools. The cop said they didn't want my van, just what was in it. I did not want to drive down to Detroit just for a doctor visit, so I had planned a road trip down to Wyandotte and then west to Lake Michigan area, so I had a lot of stuff in the van. The damage was over $3000 for a door panel, and a complete steering column. When they punched out the ignition, they broke the housing that it fit into, so they couldn't just replace the ignition switch. Sorry about the long sad story. But most people have no idea how quickly things can go south in Detroit. Aside from a few pockets of development, it is basically a third world country. I was a firefighter during the 1967 riots. I was streetwise. I went anywhere I wanted to in Detroit, and never worried about it. I knew every street and alley in the city. But it still happened, in the middle of the afternoon, in a populated area, with streets full of people! And that area of Hildale, Mt Elliot, East Davison looks like a war zone. No people, burned out houses, streets strewn with broken glass, and totally deserted.
And just to rub salt into the wound, when I looked at the towing receipt, there was a $75 admin fee to the City of Detroit! The city collects $75 on every stolen, or accident vehicle that gets towed! The more crime, the more money the city makes!
Glad it wasnt worse and you retrieved most of your property. Did your insurance reimburse for any of those towing fees?
