WEB PAGE TOOLS ~ Print this article ~ E-mail your opinion on this article OTHER FEATURES STORY ~ Still taking to the streets: Activists seek deeper meaning in continuing protests Every 15 minutes: Auto thefts on the rise PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES Christiane Helbig Ebbtide Reporter The alarm went off at 5:40 a.m., and we forced ourselves out of bed. My husband and I performed our morning routine of showering, dressing and packing lunch. While my husband was locking the apartment door, I proceeded down the first set of stairs. I looked toward our car as I always do. "The car is not there!" Illustration by Devin Yu My husband gave me a puzzled look and asked, "What? What do you mean?" Our car was always parked in its assigned parking spot in front of our apartment building. There was no other place to look. We did not even go all the way down, but turned around and went back into our apartment to call the police. I was shaking. I could not believe that our car had been stolen. It was Jan. 8, 2002, and what seemed to begin like a normal day became the beginning of our auto-theft odyssey. We learned the hard way that just locking a car is no longer sufficient to keep it from being stolen. Research shows that many people are not worried about the safety of their cars. However, vehicle theft is a serious problem of national proportions, and no more so than in Washington state and King County. While the booming economy in the 1990s caused the national car-theft rate to decrease, the economic downturn since the end of the 1990s has reversed the trend. Auto theft is on the rise again according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation 2000 Uniform Crime Report. Worse, the Washington State Patrol (WSP) reported an increasing number of stolen cars throughout the last decade. In fact, every 15 minutes a vehicle is stolen in Washington. The majority of these auto thefts occur in the counties surrounding the Puget Sound. King, Pierce and Snohomish counties represent more than 70 percent of the total number of stolen vehicles in the state. The National Insurance Crime Bureau found that the top 10 metropolitan areas for vehicle theft, which include Tacoma (seventh) and Seattle (ninth), are located near or within reach of ports and the Canadian and Mexican borders. Shoreline followed Washington's trend. In 2001, 229 vehicles were stolen within the city limits. In 2002, the number of stolen vehicles increased to 256. However, SCC's parking lots appear quite safe. In 2001, the King County Sheriff's Office recorded three vehicles were stolen out of the lots. In 2002, two cars were stolen. A survey of 41 SCC students revealed that 12 percent had vehicles stolen at least once. Interestingly enough, a survey by Progressive Insurance, which queried 567 people, showed that 11 percent reported stolen vehicles. While the SCC student survey is a small sampling, it appears to be a valid representation of the amount of auto theft and clearly indicates that vehicle larceny is a prevalent problem. What are the thieves' favorite vehicles? © 2003 Shoreline Community College™