Bittersweet Blog

January 17, 2006

A Stolen Love Is Found, 37 Years Down the Road

By Michael Wilson

Alan Poster had been going through a rough time that winter. A Brooklyn native and a 26-year-old guitar salesman, he had just divorced and moved from Queens to a 21st Street studio in Chelsea. He bought himself a flashy treat that he could barely afford but could not resist: a blue Corvette. Boy, I know that feeling. I was 25 and worked three jobs to save up enough

He had owned it for only two or three months when it was stolen from a parking garage on 23rd Street. It was Jan. 22, 1969. What trauma!

Years passed, and there were other cars, but he never forgot that 1968 Corvette. "Probably the only car I've ever really loved," Mr. Poster, now 63, said in an interview last week. "That car and my new life started together." I’ve loved all of my cars, but the Vette the most

The new life took him to California. Turns out, the car followed.

Almost 37 years after the Corvette was stolen, Mr. Poster got a call last month that it had been recovered, just days before it was supposed to be shipped to a buyer in Sweden. It was flagged during a routine Customs Service check of the vehicle identification number, sending two New York City detectives on a long-shot search through thousands of crime reports to connect the car to its first owner. Amazingly nice of them to pursue it.

"We can call this a miracle," Mr. Poster said. "I stand in the shower going, 'Why me?' Has anything like this ever happened to you?" Sniff! I’m getting all choked up here…

The car is to be returned to Mr. Poster today, at a news conference in Carson, Calif. It is silver now, with a red interior, and the engine was replaced at some point. Inexplicably, it has no transmission. "Up until this moment, I thought it was chopped up and shipped away," Mr. Poster said. "It's in great shape, I understand." He said he does not plan to drive it much. "I am going to be a collector of a Corvette." GASP! What do you mean, great shape? It has little value now! That poor baby!

The 1968 Corvette represented a breakthrough for Chevrolet, created in the so-called Mako Shark design and ushering in the third generation of Corvettes. There were 18,630 Corvette convertibles made that year. One of which sits in my garage…

One of those convertibles, painted International Blue, rolled out of the factory and to a dealer in Great Neck on Long Island on July 16, 1968. Mr. Poster paid $6,000 for the car a few months later, he said. This is the shade of blue my car is currently, although it is coded for British Racing Green

"I didn't have a lot of money," he said. "I went out on a limb to get this thing. It was an egocentric muscle car that just came out. Back then, Corvette was hot as heck. That was an absolute fantasy of mine." Sob! More Kleenex, please. This is so moving…

A 1968 Corvette in mint condition would be worth anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 now, depending on the type of engine, according to Classic Corvettes and Convertibles in Tarpon Springs, Fla. Most of the 32 1968 Corvettes listed for sale yesterday on the Hemmings Motor News Web site were in that range, with some priced at more than $100,000. That’s for a big block. Ours aren’t so optioned.

He liked, in no particular order, to drive fast with the top down and impress girls. "I was dating back then," he said. "I used to drive up the West Side Highway to Jersey. Trips like that. For the little time I had it, it was fun." Joy is so fleeting.

On the night before the Corvette was stolen, Mr. Poster foiled an attempt to steal it from a curbside parking spot on the Upper West Side, he said. He was picking up a date and saw the car pulling away, but managed to pull the man out. "I let him go," he said, and he did not report the incident. The next night, a garage attendant went to get the Corvette, but returned and said it was gone. Mr. Poster did not have insurance against theft because he could not afford it, he said. He went years without owning another car. Well, what part of no insurance sounded like a good idea? (Or owning one in NYC, for that matter) Hello? That’s like child endangerment. You can afford years of payments with nothing to show for it? But not insurance? Didn’t think this thru, Mr. I ♥ NY, now did you?

"It was a wake-up call," he said. "It made me believe you can't fall in love with things. It was kind of an interesting awakening." Well, there’s a little epiphany you can forget me ever having. (Holding down intercom to garage) Isn’t that right sweetie? Beep! Beep!

The police report, dated Jan. 22, 1969, offered little hope that Mr. Poster was ever going to see his Corvette again. Oh, but they were incredibly concerned and polite, I’ll bet. Right after taking that $200 bribe from the parking garage attendant who said it vanished before his shift.

It stated, in full: "Comp reports that at the t/p/o his car below was taken from the above premises in some unknown manner." Did it have the anti-theft option? Or was that too costly as well?

If it seemed - full as it was with police abbreviation - that the officer was in a hurry, there was good reason: With 1969 just 22 days old, Mr. Poster's was the 6,620th car reported stolen in New York City so far that year, and one of more than 78,000 by year's end. On average, about 215 vehicles were stolen in the city every day - more than four times the current rate. Sheesh! No wonder insurance was so high. The subway is starting to look good.

He eventually left New York for California, founding the Ace Products Group, a company that makes cases for cameras and guitars, drums and other musical instruments. He settled in Petaluma, north of San Francisco. He is a single father with a 17-year-old daughter. He drives a Mercedes. I hope the little princess gets her hands on the Vette and comes visits me so we can go for a cruise together.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau keeps a database of stolen vehicles, a database that is routinely checked before a vehicle is exported. On Dec. 7 last year, Customs checked three cars being sold by a collector in Long Beach, Calif. One of them had been reported stolen in New York City on Jan. 22, 1969. No further information was available. No name of the owner, no address, not even a police precinct or borough. Lucky even that showed up as it was pre-computer-database info.

The case was given to two detectives in the auto crimes division in Queens, Cliff Bieder, 44, and William Heiser, 41. They went to police headquarters in Lower Manhattan, and to Room 300, the daunting records room, to search on microfilm. If they had not found the report by Jan. 1, the car would have been shipped to Sweden, they said. Where it would have been retro-fitted with a can opener, spoon and screwdriver and painted Neutrality Beige. Oh, wait, that’s Switzerland.

"It was the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack, that report," Detective Heiser said. "One of the guys bet us a steak dinner we wouldn't find it." Can I offer you guys some venison?

With 44 years' experience between them, the detectives spent four days in Room 300, squinting at fine print - "Our eyes were hurting," Detective Bieder said - when Detective Heiser found the report on Dec. 23. He told his partner. "I thought he was going to pass out," he said. I think we owners should chip in and get them something nice for their efforts. Like a slow squad car to chase speeders with or something. This was far beyond the call of duty, and I’m guessing one or both were car enthusiasts to make that type of effort.

Finding Mr. Poster was easier. The detectives tracked him through the buyer of his last house in the New York metropolitan region, who said he lived in California. Mr. Poster said Detective Bieder called him at his office.

"He said, 'You had a car stolen in '69? A Corvette? What color was it?'" Mr. Poster recalled. "I said, 'Blue.' He said, 'We have your car.' " How did they know from that?

Less is known about what happened to the Corvette over the past 36 years than what did not happen to it: apparently no one ever tried to register or insure it, the detectives said, or the same flag from the database would have surfaced. Amazing.

"It's almost like it was just put somewhere and then pulled out a year ago and put up for sale," he said. The man who was selling the car to the buyer in Sweden is not suspected of any wrongdoing, the detectives said. The detectives are trying to trace the car's history backward. "It could have been through so many hands already," Detective Bieder said. "It's hard to find who's culpable." But fun to try and find out

Auto thefts in New York have dropped sharply, to 17,875 last year, the police said. The detectives have been gloating over their success since the day they found the report. "We came back and said after the new year, we'd be eating steak dinner," Detective Heiser said. "Somewhere nice. Not Sizzler." They could char some steaks over at the Ground Zero Café…

The whole affair put Mr. Poster in a reflective mood. So sad. Yet happy. No, sad, no, happy….

"Things don't happen by accident," he said. "Things come back to me. I have no idea why. Maybe it all comes back to you at some point."
Zen and the Art of Corvette Recovery?