My car is back in Seattle.
When I flew back to Phoenix from LAX, I left it in a long-term parking lot there. I gave the keys to the parking lot. I posted a brief message on Craigslist saying I needed someone to drive my car from LAX to Seattle and I would happily pay for gas. I didn’t expect to get any responses, but, within a few hours, I had 10 responses, and in a few more I had 25. People were begging to drive my car up the coast for just the price of gas.
I picked the response that was the most grammatically correct and sane-sounding. It was a 25-year-old girl who said she and her boyfriend had been wanting to get up to Seattle to spend time with his family, and this would be amazingly helpful to them. After speaking with her on the phone, I decided I still liked her. She sent me photos of her and her boyfriend’s drivers licenses, and I called my insurance company to make sure I’d still be covered if they got in a wreck. After that, I told her the address of the parking lot and I called the parking lot to tell them to release the car to her. I figured that there was about a 50% chance my car would end up at my apartment in Seattle and a 50% chance it would end up in a chop shop in Mexico. At the time, I didn’t much care which.
When I posted on SIAM about having left my car at the LAX lot, I got emails from friends and family. Family in Southern California offered to pick up my car and take it to their homes. Friends offered to drive my car back to Phoenix. One dear friend texted to say that, if I needed him to, he would fly to LA and drive my car back up to Seattle for me. These are real people who actually exist in my life because I’m crazy blessed like that. I can’t even believe the wonderful people I have in my world. Thank you all. I love you guys so much.
By this time, though, the Craigslist people had already picked up my car.
I gave the girl my Seattle address and the phone number of my neighbor, who would take the car and the keys from her. She kept in regular contact with me via text message, asking things like what kind of gas to use and did she want me to return the car on a full tank. She gave me her boyfriend’s bank account number to deposit the gas money in. “I don’t think you should do that until you see the car,” my mom cautioned, reasonably. But I knew these people weren’t flush with cash, and paying for all that gas is a hardship when you don’t have much money to begin with. Plus, I figured that if anything went wrong, having the guy’s Bank of America account number would make it easy for the cops to track him down. So I deposited the money. At this point, I figured there was still about a 30% chance of my car currently being in a Mexican chop shop as I deposited hundreds of dollars into a total stranger’s bank account.
Wonder of wonders, my neighbor texted me tonight to let me know that she had the car and the keys and that everything was in good shape. She said she’d met the couple and they were very sweet. My car is currently in my apartment complex’s garage and the keys are on my kitchen counter. Wonder of wonders indeed.
“Thank you,” I said to the girl who had driven my car up. “This was so incredibly helpful to me.”
“No,” she said. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how helpful this was to us. We had so much fun, and we’re so glad to be in Seattle. You really helped us out.”
Tonight I was marveling to my father at the phenomenon of my car not being stolen by these people who could pretty easily have stolen it. “It’s bizarre that there are still good people in the world,” I said.
“You know what I think is bizarre?” he responded. “For all the crime that occurs in this world, there’s still a hell of a lot of crime that doesn’t.”
