Finder of Lost Cars

It happens one Friday night. After years of forgetting where I left my car in the ominous underground labyrinth of 3,000 vehicles known as the Century City Shopping Center and Marketplace’s parking lot, this time I hammer it into my head: Don’t forget that pink wall you’re parked next to. Later, loaded down with a Banana Republic bag full of early holiday gifts--for myself--I trek right back to, I swear, that same pink wall, only to find my freshly painted ’91 Nissan, well, not there. After 20 long minutes, I make my way to the parking office. Enter Doug Morse, my last hope.

Though only 20, Morse is remarkably composed. A former LAPD Explorer, he is one of several security officers at Century City who reunite as many as 20 disoriented shoppers a day with their wayward vehicles. He holds sway in the parking office’s inner sanctum, the room of lost shoppers, where he is surrounded by people mumbling incoherently, much like myself: “I thought I knew where I parked.” “Maybe someone took it.” “We could have sworn it was in the hot pink section.”

“Do you remember what floor you were parked on?” Morse inquires tactfully. “About what time did you get here? What was the first store that you went into?” He finishes the polite interrogation and ushers us onto a go-cart (the woman who’s convinced her car was stolen is mortified someone might recognize her--for shame!--being escorted), then launches into a mini-spiel about seat-belt safety and keeping limbs inside the cart.

Soon we’re off, kicking up asphalt dust at 8 mph in search of my shining red Nissan. “What’s interesting,” Morse notes, “is that everyone thinks they’re the only one who will lose their car in a parking structure. But they’re not. I’ve even done it myself.”

We navigate through an underworld populated by legions of lost shoppers swinging their Bloomies bags. They frantically press car-alarm key chains, desperate to hear that familiar beep. We fight them off our four-seater as they beg to jump on with us. Then, suddenly, there’s my car, not stripped in some abandoned field after all but right next to a different pink wall. Next time, I resolve, I’ll go valet.

I turn to wave goodbye to Morse, but he’s off to aid my cart compatriots. “Wait,” he promises the the lost hordes. “I’ll be back for you.” And when he pulls away, the shoppers’ contorted expressions recall extras playing drowning “Titanic” passengers with lifeboats passing over them.