Oh, you thought me getting my stolen Jeep back after two days was the end of the story. Just replace the steering column, have the thing detailed for the smoke, and we’re all good.
Guess again.
When the insurance inspector came to look at the Jeep, he found a small torch and foil. Turns out his nose was better than mine. In what I had put down as some seriously awful cigarette smoke, he detected something more sinister. He assumed fentanyl use, and totaled out the vehicle. (It turns out the car thief had been busted the week before with fentanyl, too.)
The remediation maze
Immediately, the garage not only wouldn’t work on it, but didn’t want to touch it, for fear of absorbing meth through their skin, although I had rashly been through it myself, collecting the unwanted penny collections and clothes to turn over to the Aurora Police. I got lucky; the police didn’t warn me of the danger, and in retrospect it would have been prudent to have some Narcan nearby. So I can’t blame them for being exceedingly cautious.
So with the car already having been on the lot for a couple of weeks waiting first for insurance and then for a steering column, it would have to wait some more while I found both a state licensed cleaner and a state licensed inspector.
The cleaner, Joe, had a lot to say about his work. Joe is a walking episode of Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs. He takes care of cars but also remediates crack houses and meth labs where this stuff seeps into the walls very quickly.
Talking about a current job in a nice neighborhood, he said, “The tenant disappeared – dead or in prison – at some point during the lease and his squatter pals took over. All the neighbors are older, and the place is part of an HOA.”
In another case, there was nothing to suspect from the outside until the criminals started driving around shirtless on ATVs in the middle of winter blasting music. One irritated neighbor investigated, discovered what was going on, and made it his mission in life to shut this down. It took him three years.
“It’s everywhere. I live out in idyllic suburbia, and one time I had two SWAT teams storm over our fence and take down a wayward narco in my backyard. My mother-in-law was the one that foiled him. It was 100 feet from a local TV crew covering the neighborhood lockdown.”
“You’re going to need new seats. I can clean the soft top with a power washer, but that stuff gets into the foam padding in the seats and is impossible to get out. Also new carpeting. Maybe you can find one of those rubber liners for the bed in back.” I have a six-year-old, and this car needs to be off-the-lot clean from this garbage, thus the inspection. So now, new seats, and even more time for delivery and installation. There was never any question that I’d get them.
Six weeks later
From this incident alone, I’ve replaced the seats, the carpeting, and the steering column. Previously, I had replaced the stereo, a quarter panel, the soft top, linkages, universal joints, and tie rods. So I’m well on my way to driving the Jeep of Theseus.
As it happens, the inspector was also accommodating, willing to travel up north for the work, and he was able to vouch for the cleaner. When he finished, he emailed me photos of the areas he tested and the test results. Fortunately, the car was clean as a whistle for both meth and everything else. But it was another day of waiting.
Now – finally – the actual repair work can begin.
Consider: in the course of the two days he had my car, the thief managed to foul it with poisonous drugs, sending me into a maze of remediation, and six weeks later I have neither my car nor a rental.
“It’s the peeling away of that thin civilizational veneer that we all take for granted,” says Joe, and the fentanyl and meth are exceptionally soluble.
You live your life a certain way, staying away from drugs and the surrounding crime and even any of the tertiary associations, and the natural assumption is that, like the mafia, drugs and crime will reciprocate by leaving you alone. But they don’t.
Fentanyl, meth, and the rest of it are a cartel-fueled plague. They seek you out even in the best middle-class neighborhoods. and they find you, and if you’re lucky, they only make your life complicated and not miserable.
But there are no guarantees. And there are no impregnable walls.
Joshua Sharf is a Denver resident and frequent contributor to Complete Colorado.
