Area Deadbeats Face The Grim Repo Agent Can Handle Everything From Gunmen To A Litter Of Kittens

A Monday story about a repossession man should have stated that Ed Hudson repossesses cars an average of 60 to 90 days after the bills are delinquent. The story might have implied that all repossession men wait that long.

Ed Hudson grabbed a flashlight, walked softly up to the cars in the driveway and checked the license plates.

The right ones. One for each.

Hudson and his partner, Paul Cook, moved quickly, sliding a tow-truck hook under the front wheels of the Ford Bronco.

It was about 5:20 a.m. Thursday at a small red home in the Spokane Valley, but they weren’t quiet enough. A dog barked, the house shook and the front door swung wide.

“What’s going on?” shouted the man, his hair sleep-tousled and his feet bare.

He waved a pistol, pointing it at the men. A woman in a pink T-shirt spilled out the door after him.

“Hold it,” Hudson said. He told the couple it had failed to pay $6,800, so its two cars were being repossessed.

It was a tense moment - but not that unusual for Hudson, 45. He’s been shot at, threatened with knives and fists and called everything from a lowlife to a liar.

Hudson owns Auto Recovery Service, a Spokane company that repossesses vehicles for banks and credit unions in Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Eastern Washington.

Hudson’s a repossession man. He’ll grab cars, motorcycles, recreational vehicles or anything else with wheels and delinquent bills. He bought Auto Recovery Service in 1989.

Like most businesses with seamy pasts, repossession has undergone a semantic makeover. They’re not “repo men.” They’re “finance adjusters” or “field agents.” They don’t “repossess.” They “recover.”

“The average repossession man the public pictures is a junkyard-dog type of guy who sneaks around in the middle of the night,” Hudson said. “We’re not like that. I’m a legitimate businessman.”

Hudson usually goes out at dawn. He doesn’t sneak around. He’s pretty blatant.

Hudson doesn’t look like he’s from the junkyard. He looks like a golfer, with combed-back reddish brown hair, a light jacket, blue pants and tennis shoes.

Repossession starts with a failure to pay. After several warnings to delinquents, the lender sends a final notice. Repossession usually occurs 60 to 90 days later.

There’s a repo philosophy: The workers collect bad debts inexpensively so lenders don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to recover property through the courts. That saves money for people with good credit, Hudson said.

A repossession costs only $350 to $400.

“That’s a lot cheaper than an attorney,” Hudson said. “We can do it in less than a minute. It takes them two or three weeks.”

First, the repossession man has to find you.

Hudson gets some information from the lending agencies that hire him. The rest, he improvises. Hudson has sources. He can find a Social Security number; he can find where a person lives.

On tough jobs, he’ll call a former employer. He’ll call parents. He might tell the truth, or he might say he’s an old friend. He’ll call you. He might say he wants to buy your car or truck; he might say he has a package for you.

“You couldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve given away,” Hudson said. “A TV, a lifetime subscription to a magazine.”

Once the workers spot the vehicles, they’ll snatch them. Ninety percent of the time, they just grab the cars with tow trucks. If a car can’t be towed, they’ll break in.

“Sometimes, you’ve got to get in,” Hudson said. “We’ve got master keys. Most of us can pick locks, like you see on TV.”

Some of the catches are true challenges.

Hudson’s crew finally picked up a 40-foot Pace Arrow recreational vehicle just the other day. It’s a 2-year-old beauty, someone’s home, with sleek blue and gray lines.

Hudson had been looking for that RV for months. It now sits in his storage area, which Hudson keeps secret. He doesn’t want a former owner to clip his fence and re-repossess a car.

The yard is filled with more than 60 vehicles, including cars of all kinds, a motorcycle and several RVs. The company grabs 80 to 100 vehicles a month.

The cars in this lot are frozen in time.

Seats are covered with clothes, shoes and fastfood bags from Zip’s and Taco Time. Broken glass and trash still cover the floors of a couple of cars.

An Eagle Premiere looks like the passengers still are inside. Two T-shirts are pulled over the front seats, one proclaiming “Jesus loves you.”

Drugs, guns, clothes, garbage. Hudson’s crew finds it all. In some cars, they even find pets.

“We’ve had a litter of kittens,” Hudson said. “You get a dog every once in a while. We had a bowl of maggots under the seat one time. It smelled something awful.”

Workers place valuables in separate garbage bags and tag and date them. Hudson keeps several large speakers piled in his office.

Eventually, the lending agencies take the cars or the owners get them back after paying.

Hudson has standards. He won’t repossess on Christmas and Thanksgiving. He won’t go into a locked garage.

The company has been sued 14 times since 1979 for unfairly repossessing cars or damaging vehicles. But it has been found at fault only once - in 1981 when the company was told to pay more than $3,600 for breaking into a garage to grab a car.

That doesn’t happen anymore.

“We’re real careful about who we hire,” Hudson said. “It kind of takes a special kind of person to want to be in the recovery business. You got to be sharp. You got to be a detective. You got to be a tow-truck driver. You got to have good public-relations skills.”

You got to be tough. Hudson has had knives and punches thrown at him. One man shot at his tow truck four times.

Hudson once saw a man point a pistol at his partner’s temple. His partner told the man he’d get in trouble. The man ran back inside and back out with a can of Mace. After further conversation, the man ran back inside and stayed.

Hudson hears it all from people who stumble upon him at work.

One man in Republic, Wash., said Hudson could take his truck if he would leave the new battery. It was running the man’s TV set, and he wanted to see the end of “Starsky and Hutch.”

Hudson recovered an RV recently and let the residents clear out their stuff. The woman cried the whole time. The family’s father recently had shot himself in the head.

“It can be a tough job sometimes,” Hudson said.

It was only slightly tough for Cook and Hudson early Thursday when they tried to tag-tow the two vehicles from the couple in the Valley.

“You can’t take my car,” the woman pleaded. “I’ve got all my stuff in it.”

The man calmed down and put his gun away. The woman cleaned her belongings out of her Hyundai.

“Can I get a copy of those papers?” the man asked Hudson. “You’re taking my car. Can’t I at least get a receipt?”

No such thing - only a business card.

Minutes later, Hudson and Cook tooled down the road in their tow trucks with the vehicles trailing behind.

Hudson wasn’t fazed by the gun.

“That happens,” Hudson said. “That’s not the norm, though.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo