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This woman cut a genius deal with anonymous thieves constantly stealing her car

This woman cut a genius deal with anonymous thieves constantly stealing her car

The genius way a woman convinced thieves to give back her car is going viral on a Portland subreddit.

Here's the story:

Two years ago, 32-year-old Dajah Beck's 1995 Honda Civic was stolen from her neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

"I walked around the corner from my house and it was gone," she told Tech Insider. "It was stolen about 100 feet from my front door."

The good news was the thief ditched her car about 18 hours after it was stolen. The bad news? Because of where they left it, Beck's car ended up being impounded, which cost her and her insurance provider $600 to deal with.

a 1995 honda civic

Spanish Coches/Flickr

A 1995 Honda Civic, the same make and model that was stolen from Dajah Beck.

She knew her car would likely be stolen again. According to Beck thieves have been stealing cars around Portland after public transit shuts down. There are frequent posts about the issue on the Portland subreddit.

"[The thieves are] using it like it's their own personal free Uber," Beck told TI. "And I live near a major transfer center for the lightrail and bus. It's a high traffic area for people who are trying to go places, and the police told me residential areas near the lightrail stops are popular areas for thieves."

Plus, it doesn't help that Beck owns one of the most stolen cars of all time - a Honda Civic from the '90s.

Wisdom told her this would happen to her sometime in the future, and she was right. "My car has been broken into and stolen so many times, it doesn't even faze me anymore," she told TI. "I don't leave anything valuable inside it, and as long as it isn't impounded, I just shake my fist at the sky and then go about my day."

So Beck decided since she couldn't keep her car safe by locking it, she'd leave her likely future car thieves a hilarious note asking that they park her car legally and leave her phone number on the windshield. She posted a draft of it on Facebook in 2013.

"Please just leave my old piece of sh** car in a neighborhood or something," her note said. "There's a note in this envelope; just stick it on the dash or under the wiper. A passerby will see it eventually and call me and then I can come get my car. No cops or questions asked; I'm not even mad at you."

Here's the note in full:

She included her phone number and wrote on the envelope "To the person stealing my car."

Shockingly the note appeared to work. Beck's car was stolen again in late January, but when her brother found it on January 27, her note was open on the passenger seat. The best part? Her car had miraculously been parked legally five blocks away from her home.

The thief even accidentally left a coat in her car, which was an extra bonus (though they did also steal her registration and break one of the car windows - someone even started a GoFundMe to help Beck fix it).

Beck wrote a post about her bizarre success on Reddit under her username mfiasco and it quickly became the most popular post in the Portland subreddit page of all time.

"That's incredible, I can't even imagine how much it sucks to be a Civic/Accord owner where theft like this is that common," one Redditor wrote. "This is fantastic," said another.

As for Beck, she's planning to keep the note in the glovebox from now on, but take even more preventative measures in the future.

"I'm planning on getting a Club steering wheel lock, and installing a kill switch, which should prevent this happening again," she told TI. "Although maybe I should just leave it as it is, and next time it's stolen I'll end up with a cooler jacket."

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