How to keep your car safe

Ever had your car stolen? I haven’t. Had it broken into, which is depressing enough, but never stolen. A lot of people have had one go poof though, especially around here. Just last week, the Costa Mesa gendarmerie made arrests in three car thefts Friday and Saturday, two near South Coast Plaza and the third ending in a high-speed chase on the 73 Freeway.

The No Question Best Line of the Week Award went to CMPD Lt. Dale Birney. “We’re having a theme weekend,” Birney said. Why is there so much unauthorized borrowing of cars around here? Are we bad people? Poor breeding? Early childhood issues? None of the above.

There are about 1.2 million cars stolen in the U.S. every year, which means a car is stolen every 26 seconds, which means whoever owns that thing should keep it locked for heaven’s sake.

The problem is particularly acute wherever there are large parking areas where people leave their cars for long periods of time — like amusement parks, the beach and big retail centers. Know of any of those around here? Thank you. So do the car thieves.

Stealing cars is big business in California, as one would expect, but here’s something interesting, assuming you find utterly useless information interesting, which as it turns out, is my job. Car theft is much more common here on the Left Coast than on the Right Coast.

In fact, of the top 10 cities for auto pinching, none of them is farther east than Las Vegas, which wins the blue ribbon for the most car thefts, which makes sense, with a gazillion cars and trucks in parking lots that are far away from their owners, who disappear inside casinos and hotels for hours at a time. Here is the rest of top-10 list following Las Vegas — Modesto, Stockton, Phoenix, Visalia, Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, Fresno and Yakima. See? It’s a western thing.

Auto abductions, which are like alien abductions only without the mother ship and the probing, dropped about 5% last year in most of the country, but not here, wouldn’t you know.

Hondas and Toyotas top the list of cars most likely to get pinched, apparently because their parts are the easiest to sell. And that’s what stealing cars is all about these days — selling parts — everything from sound systems to alternators to door handles.

Very few stolen cars are sold and driven off as-is, as least not knowingly. The odds of driving a stolen car and not getting caught in these hyper-high-tech times are not good, which brings us to chop shops, which have nothing to do with pork by-products, and yes we all know what goes into hot dogs so let’s not discuss it.

A good chop shop can totally dismantle a car and have the individual parts out the door within hours, after which the carcass of the poor little picked-over thing is unceremoniously dumped on a backstreet or in the most obscure industrial park available.

That is why when the police call and say, “We found your car” — it’s not a good thing. What they probably found was the body of your car with everything but the latch on the glove compartment stripped out although that may be gonzo too.

So what can you do to increase the odds that your car remains yours and you don’t end up lying awake all night and missing it desperately?

I guess you could buy a beater no one in his right mind would steal. I would go with a 1976 Gremlin in pumpkin orange with a rusted-out bumper, although those can be hard to find. Lucky for you, here are some better ideas, from people who actually know this stuff, like the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

These are their top tips from NICB to make sure someone you’ve never met doesn’t end up behind your wheel: Never leave your car running unattended, no matter how fast you think you can run in and out of that 7-11. Above all, never leave the keys in the ignition, which believe it or not, is exactly how most stolen cars become stolen cars.

Also, never leave car keys inside a garage, locked or not, or worse yet, a spare key that’s “hidden” somewhere in or on your car. People who borrow cars permanently for a living know every conceivable hiding place and every clever little magnetic gadget and they can find those things faster than you can say “fast.”

So that’s it then. As per usual, a little common sense is probably the best plan. Be careful where you park, don’t go to Vegas and if you see an orange 1976 Gremlin with a rusted-out bumper, jump on it. Vroom.

I gotta go.