Car Towed by Mistake; Owner Finds It Too Late

A motorist whose car was mistakenly towed from a service station searched frantically for three days before he found his prized Chevy--too late--in a junkyard.

“It was squished, just like a little metal cube,” John Geraca said last week. “All the wheels and the doors were gone. It was about 20 inches high.”

Geraca took his last ride in the 1975 Chevrolet Monte Carlo on March 11, when he went to the service station to pick up the Cadillac he had dropped off for a tuneup, police said.

After paying the bill for the work, Geraca drove away in the Cadillac and left his red Chevy behind in the parking lot, intending to pick it up later, police said.

But it was gone when he returned after two hours. Another red Chevy, this one a 1976 Impala, was still in the parking lot, however.

The owner of that car had asked that it be junked, and no one at the station noticed when the tow truck picked up the wrong car.

“I guess he just pulled up, hooked up on a Chevy and away he went,” said station attendant Richard Logan. “He didn’t ask anybody about it.”

Sam Parisi, owner of Southern Auto Parts junkyard, said it was an honest mistake because the description of the two red Chevrolets was identical.

“Right about now, they’re probably making Toyotas out of it,” said Parisi.