After his Audi A6 was stolen, taken for a joy ride, crashed and trashed, Jerry Southard found the possible smoking gun to the crime after he got it back from the body shop.

“In the back seat I saw something shiny. I thought ‘What is that? It was a Samsung cellphone,” said Southard. “Talk about a dumb car thief story.”

The folks at the body shop didn’t claim the phone and it didn’t belong to anyone who detailed the sedan. Wednesday, after some prodding by one reporter and many phone calls by Southard, Denver police detectives collected the phone. It could be an important piece of evidence which could lead them to the criminals who drove Southard’s car out of the Broadway and Kentucky light rail Park-n-Ride the night of Aug. 24.

That evening, Southard took the light rail to his job as an usher at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. As he walked to the train, he dropped his car keys and the wrong person found them.

Southard still wonders what happened to four newly-laundered tuxedo shirts which he’d placed in the trunk.

To add insult to injury, the Denver police told Southard someone sold the car on Craigslist at least once while it was gone. Turns out, said Southard, the last person who ended up with the Audi “produced a bill of sale to law enforcement.”

Wednesday, as he was going through his car, he found more stuff that didn’t belong to him: a belt, a cellphone cord and a gym card. On the card was a UPC code. He called the gym and now has a name and phone number, which he has given to the detective in charge of his case.

“I’ve done my due diligence,” said Southard, who just retired as an interior designer who once worked in Aspen, London and Paris. “If this doesn’t turn out, I can use that phone for a doorstop.”

He threw away the belt, the plastic cat-ear headbands and the cellphone cord.

The face of car theft

Southard is one of 36,626 Coloradans whose vehicles were stolen as of Nov. 16 this year. According to the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority, vehicle thefts statewide are up 11% from last year.

Not surprisingly, the Denver metro area is a state hot spot. It owns three-fourths of the state’s auto theft but has only 52% of the population. Denver Metro area numbers from the Car Metropolitan Auto Task Force (C-MATT) show that 23,457 vehicles were stolen along the front range from from Jan. to Sept 2022. That’s a nearly 30% increase from 2020.

At the top of CATPA’s most-stolen list in the state are the Chevy Silverado pickup, Kia Sportage and the Hyundai Sonata. Kia  and Hyundai represent six of the top 10 makes and models stolen in the Denver Metro and their theft rate has increased by 1,700%.

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Honda earned those bragging rights, but Commander Mike Greenwell of C-MATT of the Lakewood Police Department said “since 2008, when Honda changed to chip key technologies, it fell out of the top 10. Most vehicles have chip key technology.”

Greenwell said an average of 86 vehicles are stolen every day along the front range — the worst in the country. A single car thief ring can steal up to 10 vehicles in one day.

Robert Force, with the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority, said no vehicle on the roadway is immune to theft, “especially when owners don’t lock their car and leave their keys inside.”

Force said that there are gangs of thieves who troll neighborhoods and gas station parking lots on the lookout for puffers. If there’s one message he has for drivers, it’s this: “Please lock your car and take your keys every time you leave your car, even when you’re starting it and warming it up,” said Force.

Puffers are cars which have been started, but left unattended. It is illegal in Colorado to leave a car running without being inside the vehicle.

Ironically, though more vehicles are stolen in Denver and Colorado than any other place in the country, all but 20% of them are found, often within four weeks of the theft.

‘It’s super invasive’

Force said the Rocky Mountain area has one of the highest recovery rates in the country because Colorado car robbers aren’t stealing vehicles for parts.

“Most of them are heavily involved in drugs. They use the vehicle as a means of transportation to commit other crimes and they may use to barter for more drugs,” he said.

That’s likely what happened to Tonia Jackson last month. On Oct. 7, she drove into her apartment parking garage near I-25 and Yale, got distracted by the sound of a crash on the street, dropped her purse, and accidentally left her fob inside the SUV. That was the original problem.

She also forgot to lock her treasured 2018 Land Rover.

The next morning, apartment managers told her that it was gone. When she watched the garage’s surveillance footage, she was horrified to see a man walk up her vehicle, open it, walk away and return.

“In 5 minutes, he brought backpacks, put them in the Range Rover and drove off,” she said.

Three days later, police found the grey SUV in a Silverthorne Walmart parking lot. The alleged thief had already changed the license plates, lived in it and even adjusted the seat to his 6’1” frame, a true violation in Jackson’s mind.

She paid for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation crime report on the man accused of stealing her vehicle and found he had a 17 page rap sheet. He is scheduled to appear in Summit County court for the crime later this month.

“It’s super invasive. It disrupts your entire life,” said Jackson, who since the violation has bought pepper spray, and looks over her shoulder everywhere she goes.  “I got my car back last week, but I had to have it biohazard-cleaned because it tested positive for amphetamine!”

Southard’s sedan has been disinfected too. Besides the possibly incriminating cellphone, the thieves left it filthy and littered with snack and candy wrappers and three pairs of plastic cat-ear headbands. Later, he found a used condom in the trunk.

“They even left a pine cone-air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. I’ve never used one of those in my life,” he said.

But the show must go on, and Saturday, though he is feeling numb, Southard will again trust the park-n-ride to take him to his usher job. The DCPA is featuring “My Fair Lady,” the first Broadway musical he ever attended with his mother in London.

“So it’s come full circle,” he said. “It’s so annoying, but I’m living life with the cards I’m dealt.”

Statewide CAPTA top ten most stolen auto makes and models from 2022:

Top 10
Make/Model	Thefts
Chevrolet Silverado	1,656
Kia Sportage	1,422
Hyundai Sonata	1,343
Kia Optima	1,257
Hyundai Tucson	1,137
Hyundai Elantra	1,084
Ford F-250	1,027
Honda Civic	742
GMC Sierra	727
Kia Sorento	707