Someone stole my car and now I own hundreds of vinyl records
My crappy 10 year old Civic got stolen from in front of my apartment on the day of my wedding reception. My wife freaked out but I wasn't phased too much - she still praises me for it - and called the police for the report, and a friend for a ride. We had a great party that day and a fun topic to discuss at it. Anyhow, the car was found few days later in a really bad part of town, but police didn't call us that quick like they did this lucky recipient of vinyl, so it was re-stolen from the place it was dropped off.<p>About 40 days later after my insurance written it off and the police called and said come pick it up from a junkyard. It had someone else's license places, and was severely damaged after a full-front hit on the telephone pole after apparently a high-speed police chase. Who runs away from the police in a Honda Civic?! Anyhow, even though it was hit hard in front, the airbag never engaged, so I guess I am glad it wasn't me. There was blood inside everywhere, clearly the two people who were inside were quite hurt. Anyhow, I opened the trunk to get my jumper cables and lo and behold - tools! in pretty good toolbags, too! Decent looking respirators! Strange chemicals! Lots of ammonia in large jugs! A wallet with lots of stolen checks in it. A small bag with some dude's underwear. But my old set of jumper cables is, alas, gone...<p>I brought everything home, including (perhaps stupidly? certainly my wife thought so) ammonia and powdered chemicals.  As I discovered the powder stuff lye and clearly this was all meth-making equipment. The undies had to go, but I kept some of the tools and respirators. I freecycled ammonia. We made some soap out of lye, so that was helpful.<p>The people who stole it were put in jail for various offences for a couple of years, including stealing my car. The court asked me if I had any claims and I said naah, I don't want to add to someone's bad life choices... Then , except for the $500 insurance deductible, which they deducted from his jail wages for next 3 years, and kept sending me small checks for like $19.28 or $8.78 every few months. The checks followed me to another house even though I completely forgot to update the address with the court (nice) and stopped right at $500.