This Man is Not A Thief

The work was not so hard. His strong hands could pop a Lexus without a key and coax it into neutral with a pocketknife. He could take a Chevy from a country double-wide and escape by driving backward up a winding hill in the dark. He had at least three tricks for breaching gated communities, including a metal sheet that fooled the gate into swinging open. These were all mechanical problems, soluble with a known set of rules.

But those rules would go out the window if the debtor showed his face.

Sometimes, a man stealing a car in the middle of the night is not a thief, but a repo man, but he can be mistaken for a thief, and if he lives in a state where citizens are given the right to kill thieves and intruders, he may be shot and killed. Sometimes a man stealing a car in the middle night will be recognized as a repo man, and the debtor will see him and beg him not to take away her car, because she has cancer and needs the car to get to her chemotherapy appointment, but he will have to ignore her pleas and take the car anyway, and bury his feelings months later when he learns that the woman is now deceased. Sometimes a man stealing a car in the middle of the night is a repo man, and he will have earned $45 after spending 8 hours figuring out which car he has to steal to earn that money, because he has a family at home who relies on him. Here is a story about a repo man that you should read.

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