Lynda Alsip, then only 17, bought a Ford Mustang for $800. She loved that car so much. Her dad who has passed helped her purchase it. Roughly about a year after she bought the car, someone stole it right from in front of her house.
One of the worst things about the story is she had just received her personalized licensed plates “LYNDA 67,” and after the car was stolen you can only imagine how low she felt.
Now 28 years later, Lynda received a call from a local police officer, and it had to be one of the happiest days in her life.
From Monterey Herald:
It was her first car. They even shared the same birthday, said Alsip, who was born in 1967. She bought the car for $800 at the age of 17, with a little help from her dad who has since passed away.
But about a year after she bought the car, it was stolen from outside her apartment complex in Salinas. Before she had the chance to install her personalized license plates — “LYNDA 67” — it was gone.
“I never thought I would see it again,” she said standing in a Salinas tow yard next to her car, which was recovered in September by the California Highway Patrol. “It’s like winning the lottery. It happens to very few people, and for it to happen to me, it’s just an amazing feeling.”
The car was located at the Salinas’ Department of Motor Vehicles. A man was trying to register the Mustang to his name after having it for about 23 years and doing some work to it.
“It had been out of the system for so long that it came back with no file. All of the files for the vehicle had been purged,” CHP officer Jaime Rios said. “The officer did some digging and found out the car was stolen in 1986 from Salinas.”
Officer Chris Menchen, who did the investigation and recovered the vehicle, said the man said he bought it from a storage and had just come around to registering the vehicle. Officials are still investigating whether or not he knew it was stolen.
Watch the police officer hand over the keys to Lynda:
What a powerful ending to a tragic beginning. Lynda never thought she would see her car again, but when she received the keys in her hand, there couldn’t be anyone on this earth happier.
Remember I said she had personalized license plates 28 years ago, well she still had them and guess where she put them.
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