Stolen Chevy returned to owner 30 years later
Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 12:39 pm
if I could only get to be so lucky !
A sweet but forlorn and inoperative classic-era Chevy stolen 30 years ago from Ian “Skip” Wilson just came back to him — reborn.
“There's all kinds of chrome added under the hood,” said Wilson, a retired Lake County mechanic doubly astonished that his 1957 Bel Air has returned and that it's been gorgeously customized.
“The headers look brand spankin' new,” he said. “The tires, they look like they haven't even been around the block.”
A '57 Bel Air is one of the world's most prized collector's cars. This one was stolen from Wilson's place in Clearlake Oaks not just once but twice in the early 1980s.
Wilson, who's 65 and battling cancer, had long before quit hoping to see it again when, about three weeks back, a California Highway Patrol investigator named Mike Maleta phoned him from Southern California.
Maleta told him a Chevy possibly of interest to him was found in a shipping container at the Port of Los Angeles, awaiting transport to Australia.
full story and picture can be seen here - - - http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... /140219502
A sweet but forlorn and inoperative classic-era Chevy stolen 30 years ago from Ian “Skip” Wilson just came back to him — reborn.
“There's all kinds of chrome added under the hood,” said Wilson, a retired Lake County mechanic doubly astonished that his 1957 Bel Air has returned and that it's been gorgeously customized.
“The headers look brand spankin' new,” he said. “The tires, they look like they haven't even been around the block.”
A '57 Bel Air is one of the world's most prized collector's cars. This one was stolen from Wilson's place in Clearlake Oaks not just once but twice in the early 1980s.
Wilson, who's 65 and battling cancer, had long before quit hoping to see it again when, about three weeks back, a California Highway Patrol investigator named Mike Maleta phoned him from Southern California.
Maleta told him a Chevy possibly of interest to him was found in a shipping container at the Port of Los Angeles, awaiting transport to Australia.
full story and picture can be seen here - - - http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... /140219502