A few evenings ago a Snohomish County Sheriff knocked on our door and asked me if I owned a 1993 Mazda Navajo.  It had been involved in a hit and run.  Whaaaaat?  That’s our farm truck and last time I checked it was parked out by the barn with a trailer full of junk attached to it!     The story goes like this:  our old truck wasn’t the target, this 1965 Buick Wildcat convertible was. As soon as the Buick was stolen, the daughter of the owner put out the word on Facebook.  About 24 hours later the car was spotted at a vacant house right down the hill from our place in Granite Falls.  When the sheriff stopped to investigate, the car thief took off running.

Remember…Goebel Hill Farm is surrounded by lots of forest and farmland.  The only place the car thief had to run was straight into a field full of cows!  He ran and ran and ran across the cow fields – about 80 acres of pasture land.  He headed towards the woods along the creek below our property and hightailed it up the bank.  He was hell bent on avoiding Goebel Hill Road, so the only place to go was up to our place, where he ran across our old 1993 Mazda Navajo parked out next to the barn…with the key in it.  Yeah…I know.  He must have been full of adrenaline because he disconnected the trailer full of junk, laid it on the ground and drove off across our pasture! Unfortunately, he had nowhere to go.

We have an in and an out on our property and both of them have locked gates.  Judging by the tracks he left, he drove rather carefully through the Christmas trees and headed towards the exit where he found the gate locked.  So he backed up and opened a smaller gate between two of our pastures and tried that route.  Not successful, there is no way out, just more Christmas trees.  He must have been stressed by then because he finally crashed right through an electric fence and into our other neighbor’s pasture attempting to get out to the road in our truck.

When that neighbor saw the truck racing across his pasture, he didn’t recognize it as ours, and he told me he thought for sure someone was coming to steal his medical marijuana supply so he called the police!   By the time the car thief finally found his way out to the paved road, he’d crashed through the fence in five different places.  By this time the sheriff’s office was on to him.  He finally crashed our truck a few miles up the road on 123^rd Avenue NE and took off on foot.  The dogs lost him.  The last I knew he was still on the run.

A few days later we were allowed to pick up our truck from the sheriff’s office.  The headlights and a tail light are broken and it’s really beat up from crashing through the fences.  The owner of the Buick Wildcat convertible wasn’t so lucky.  His daughter told us that her father bought this Buick Wildcat convertible back in 1965 brand new, straight off the lot.  When they picked up the car they found the thieves had cut the ignition wires, damaged the convertible top and trashed the car inside and out, filling it up with needles.  It took them about 5 hours to sort it all out at the station and they had to tow the car back home.

 We understand that Mr. Fowlds, the owner of the Wildcat, has put his heart into all of the vehicles he’s ever owned and is grateful for the car being back where it belongs.  Be sure to give him a shout out when you see him at his place of business:  Fowlds Cleaners at Frontier Village in Lake Stevens.

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