It takes a village to help man recover stolen van

In University Village, where Mason Theis lives with his girlfriend, anything that isn’t nailed down gets stolen: bikes, toys, barbecues.

The Tenth Commandment of multifamily housing, that all things lighter than 50 pounds should be locked up at all times, is strictly observed because the Fourth Commandment, about not coveting your neighbor’s stuff, isn’t.

“It’s basically anything that’s left outside,” Theis said. “We’ve had bikes stolen, skate boards, a wood splitter.”

The perpetrator slips away unseen, and neighbors in the complex become dark strangers, suspects smeared with the shadow of a miscreant’s anonymity.

Two weeks ago, Theis was burned again when someone stole his girlfriend’s 1984 Chevrolet conversion van. Debbie Svoboda went out the night before for Wendy’s hamburgers and left the keys in the ignition when she returned to the stucco complex at University Road and 32nd Avenue.

And the van wasn’t the only thing gone. All the fishing gear Theis had packed for summer camping trips with Svoboda’s 6-year-old son, Adrian, was also missing.

Theis, 33, and not a pound over a buck eighty, skipped his manufacturing job the following Monday, determined to recover the van.

“I had a car stolen 10 years ago, right outside the courthouse. So, I know what you have to do,” Theis said. “You go to the shadiest parts of the city and you drive through real slow. You go to hooker town. You go to crack town. You go to meth monster town.”

Or, you could just stay at the scene of the crime. As quickly as the stolen van story spread through the 116-apartment complex, residents were telling Theis they’d seen the van driving through the neighborhood.

University Village, like any community, has good people, too, people who look out for one another. It’s a resting spot for frugal retirees, a cabbage patch for young families, a proverbial hive of low-wage earners where, at all hours, someone is coming home from work.

Neighbors were even talking about the stolen van down at Harry’s Foodmart, the corner gas station at Dishman-Mica and Schafer roads where neighbors go for milk and cigarettes.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Monday, Harry’s clerk Mike O’Conner spotted the van rolling through Harry’s parking lot to avoid the corner stoplight. When it drove through again minutes later, O’Conner called Theis.

“I would have called him sooner, but I was waiting on somebody at the counter,” O’Conner said. “Then, some girls came in and said the van was driving down University.”

In the movies, the protagonist is always ready for a call like O’Conner’s. Dirty Harry would have been beside the phone polishing his .44 Magnum. Buford Pusser would have been at the woodpile selecting a 4-foot whooping stick. Mason Theis wasn’t wearing any pants and couldn’t find his shoes fast enough.

“I put on my girlfriend’s pants, ran out the door barefoot and jumped in my other van,” Theis said. “When I got to the stop light (at University Road and 32nd Avenue) he was two cars in front of me.”

Theis ran up to the driver’s door of the stolen van and knocked the thief half out of the driver’s seat. They fought over the steering wheel and the car keys, and then the thief, who was screaming wildly, stepped on the accelerator, sending the van rolling northward down University. It didn’t stop until hitting a mailbox two blocks later.

“The mailbox couldn’t have been one of those wooden, baseball bat mailboxes. It had to be a wrought iron bastard,” Theis said. “It knocked me out of the van and then the guy backed up and almost ran over me.”

The van kept going without Theis for another block before the engine died and the thief ran away. In the meantime, the banged-up Theis tried to flag down motorists for help, which didn’t work. One woman locked her doors and drove around Theis as he walked into the street. Others drove by, rubbernecking.

The front of the van was now dented from the crash and the driver’s door damaged. Inside the van, Theis found a mountain of junk, stolen bicycle parts, broken mirrors. Someone had ripped out some flexible tube lighting above one of the windows, Theis assumes, to tie off a bicep and inject drugs.

“In the one day the van was gone, it was a tweaker’s dream in there,” Theis said. “There were drug pipes on the floor, pages from porno magazines. I don’t want to know what went on.”

Theis did, however, find a key to a Subaru on the floor. The key matched a strange car that appeared the day the van was stolen. Inside the Subaru, Theis found his fishing gear – just in time for the three-day weekend.