A California man turned sleuth when his golf car went missing.
According to the Orange County Register, when Laguna Woods Village man Dennis Hannan found that his golf car was missing from his carport, he called his daughter in New York. Within minutes, the car was found on Orange County Craigslist.
Later that morning, Hannan, 73, went with his findings to Cart Mart in Lake Forest, where he had bought the car. Salesman and car builder Jerod Morgan had seen this sort of thing before.
“I see this all the time,” Morgan told the Register. “But I’ve found them online on three different occasions.” Once, he said, a seller gave it back while claiming not to know the car was stolen. The other time, he was too late and the car had already been sold.
After having little luck with various police departments over the phone, the pair went to a sheriff’s department substation near the listing, which was about 50 miles away. A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy got involved. Morgan and Det. Erik Coker went to the seller’s home with Coker posing as the potential buyer and Morgan as a friend coming along. They arranged a code for when Morgan identified the car as Hannan’s.
According to the Register, Morgan had no trouble identifying the half cover and tan-ostrich seats embroidered in a custom pattern. “This is a good deal,” he told Coker – the code.
As it happened, they found not only Hannan’s car but another that had been stolen from the same area a day earlier.
Hannan has since invested in a heavy-duty chain for locking his golf car.
