We took a three-week road trip around the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2017, and I am recounting our trip in a series of blog posts. You can read the previous posts here: Ashland, Portland, Bellingham, Vancouver, Seattle, Kalaloch, Pacific City
Days 19-20: Eureka, California
Knowing that our trip from Pacific City to Eureka was going to take at least 10 hours with stops for food and gas, we left at the break of dawn and bid farewell to our lovely house.
We ended up making good time that day, so Alex and I decided to stop at a couple of the iconic roadside attractions that are scattered about the region. I love a good roadside attraction. They gave me a healthy dose of the 80’s family vacation aesthetic that I had been craving since re-watching National Lampoon’s Vacation in preparation for our road trip. Even our Instagram hashtag, #KnoxQuest4Fun, was a nod to our favorite scene from that film.
Re-entering California was a bittersweet moment. I knew it would be. It marked the beginning of our journey’s transition from an adventure to a homecoming. Even though we had five days and three cities ahead of us before we would be back home in Los Angeles, I noticed an undeniable shift in my perspective.
While we were planning this trip, the choice to add Eureka to our itinerary was an easy one. Though the town is not well-known as a tourism destination, Eureka made our list for one reason alone: it is the home of the Lost Coast Brewery. Over the years Alex and I have developed a deep affection for Lost Coast beers that borders on obsession, and we jumped at the chance to visit the place where our beer dreams were born.
We made it to Eureka as the sun was setting that day, and were delighted with our stylish, newly renovated Airbnb apartment located in the heart of Old Town. Parking was tricky at first, but we were told by our host to park in the adjacent bank parking lot just across the alleyway from our front door. This parking lot was open to pedestrian traffic on three sides but no more exposed than parking on the street.
After an uneventful dinner, we went to bed as the voices of the nighttime revelers in the alleyway below began to stir. Some of the Airbnb reviewers had said that the noise problem presented by apartment’s proximity to the Eureka nightlife hotspots was bothersome but manageable. Alex and I being good sleepers, it wasn’t a problem for us and we slept like babies that night.
Throughout our road trip, I kept up a near-constant stream of updates flowing on my Instagram account. If you were following our journey on Instagram, you might have noticed that, around the time we arrived in Eureka, there was a sudden lull in these updates.
I will now explain why.
On the morning of Wednesday, September 6th, 2017, I woke up early to take Cosmo on his first walk of the day. It was cold and misty in the early morning hours and the alleyway behind our apartment was deserted save for a few broken bottles and trash scattered about. Cosmo and I passed the driver’s side of our car on the way to some patches of grass beyond the parking lot and after a few minutes we turned around and headed back to the apartment. I wonder now what made me take so little notice of the debris on the ground that morning and whether it would have even made a difference. Probably not. The damage had already been done while we slept.
I fed Cosmo his breakfast and began getting myself ready for the day. I got a couple of missed calls from unknown numbers but let them go to voicemail as I always do when I don’t recognize the caller. I didn’t check the voicemails right away. I should have. Alex woke up an hour or so later and joined me in the kitchen where we began discussing our plans for the day.
At this point in the trip, we had become more and more careless about leaving things in the car instead of bringing them into our accommodations for safe keeping. In a way, we had started to use our car as a mobile storage facility for items that we didn’t need daily access to, and our complacency had not yet been challenged by reality.
It was then that I asked Alex to go out to the car to retrieve some items that we had left in there overnight. I needed my spare duffle bag and, most importantly, the small folio we had been keeping in the glovebox. I had purchased this folio specifically for our road trip to keep all of our important documents in one place. I knew that the likelihood of misplacing something important would be increased by the constant packing and unpacking, and I was determined not to lose any critical items. The folio contained my emergency credit cards, Cosmo’s vet forms, some spare cash, and our passports. Keeping all of those important items together in one place was smart. Leaving them in our car overnight, in an unlocked glove box, was profoundly and categorically Stupid.
Alex walked in the door and I knew immediately that something was wrong. His face was a mixture of disbelief and utter revulsion.
“Someone broke into our car.”
I made him repeat it back to me a couple times, even though the expression on his face was all the confirmation I needed.
“The passports?”
“Gone.”
Alex proceeded to tell me about how, when he crossed the alleyway, he first noticed some trash on the ground that he vaguely registered as the remnants of a tissue box that we had been keeping in the front seat of our car. Then, comprehension dawning, he noticed a thicker trail of debris comprised of maps, brochures, and other assorted knick-knacks that were unmistakably ours. By the time the trail had led him to the passenger side of our car, he already knew.
Window smashed. Muddy footprints on the back seat. Our possessions scattered.
Without pausing to think, Alex went for the glovebox first. The folio was gone. Our passports were gone.
The sight of Cosmo’s little blue water bowl surrounded by all that shattered glass still makes me sick to my stomach.
A seldom-spoken truth about marriage is that both parties fucking something up is immensely better than the blame falling on just one person. Resentment is poison in a relationship, and if there is a silver lining to what happened to us in Eureka, it is that we shared the blame and tackled the consequences of our carelessness together, as a team. To this day, we have never fought about which of us is at fault for leaving our passports in the car that night. For that, I am thankful, and for the sake of our marriage, I hope that we continually fuck stuff up together for the rest of our lives.
I went outside to observe the damage myself. It was sickening, violating, and all the other adjectives that describe the emotions one feels when they realize they have been a victim of theft. We could see, by the muddy foot and hand prints, the path the thief/thieves had made to leave no stone unturned inside our car: They climbed in through the backseat passenger window and unlocked the doors by reaching to the driver’s console. Once the doors were unlocked, their only obstacle was time. Glovebox, center console, backseat console, back hatch. I can’t imagine how long it took, but the thieves seem to have made some conscious, although perplexing decisions to leave certain items while taking others. They took a roll of paper towels but discarded a full tissue box (I kinda understand that though since I have always described tissues as ‘weak-ass paper towels’). They stole an empty over-the-seat organizer but left our beloved Three Amigos Soundtrack CD.
Our plans for our time in Eureka were now consumed by addressing the theft. We divided up the responsibilities between the two of us. For the next three hours, the kitchen in our Airbnb became The Situation Room as we juggled calling banks, filing a police report, insurance claims, passport freezes, credit freezes, reviewing identity theft checklists, coordinating a temporary window repair and cleaning glass out of the car.
After looking at my bank accounts, we were able to trace the trail of the perpetrators to a couple of gas stations and a Target where they racked up over $300 in charges on my credit cards (which is about how much I spend every time I go to Target, too). Since the Target closes at 10pm, we were able to place the time of the theft to around 9pm which was not long after Alex and I had returned from dinner the night before. The missed calls on my phone that morning had been from Chase bank. They had noticed some suspicious transactions on my otherwise dormant credit card account and were calling me to verify them. Chase, you rock. I promise to never send you to voicemail again.
For his part, Cosmo did not seem to register any outward recognition of our heightened stress level during this time. He snoozed lazily at our feet while we dealt with this sudden crisis.
For the police report and our insurance claim, we had to make a list of all the items that had been stolen. Despite how violating the whole ordeal had been, I hadn’t yet felt an emotion that registered any higher than this really sucks. All of the stolen valuables were replaceable, my money was going to be refunded by my bank, and we were taking all the steps necessary to protect our identities. Most importantly, our little family was safe.
Besides the passports, credit cards, and some small souvenirs, the thieves had nabbed a spare duffle bag that I had been using to store clothing that I didn’t need to have in my main suitcase. Every few days I would replace things in the duffle bag with stuff from my suitcase and visa versa. Since the contents of the bag were always changing, it was a challenge for me to make a list of all that had been in it at the time of the theft. It was then that tears stung my eyes for the first time as I realized that I had indeed lost something very valuable.
You see, I have (had) this pair of Jeffrey Campbell boots that I bought four years ago. I can cycle through clothing pretty regularly, but these boots were my ride-or-die, go-with-everything, never-gonna-give-you-up-never-gonna-let-you-down shoes. They were also the first expensive shoes I ever bought for myself with my own money. For me, they symbolized my independence. My adulthood. Those shoes were in the duffle bag. They were gone.
I can feel you rolling your eyes, but I hope you can imagine how much a beloved pair of shoes would mean to a girl with a style blog. I was gutted. I cried. Alex held me as I mourned my loss.
Like Googling an ex from a long-ago relationship that ended with unresolved questions, every so often I will go on an internet sleuth-a-thon for those shoes. I still don’t recall the exact style name, but if you would like a visual, they looked a lot like this but better. To this day, I have not been able to find a replacement pair. Four years is a long time in fashion terms and I understand why anyone who has them now is not selling them second hand. They are beautiful shoes.
By noon that day, we had put into motion all of the various procedures required to address the theft. Alex had even taken the car to an auto body shop that, for no charge, vacuumed all the glass out, wiped up the mud, and installed a sturdy plastic cover over our broken window. We are still profoundly grateful for their generosity.
With the afternoon still salvageable, we were able to attend a tour of the Lost Coast Brewery as we had planned. Though we enjoyed it immensely and got to meet an awesome group of fellow beer lovers, the drama of the morning continued to occupy all of the available real estate in our minds and we were compelled to share the story with almost everyone we met. The tourists were appalled, but the locals were not surprised. Half of them had a car theft story of their own, and more than one person jokingly referred to Eureka as Eur-tweek-ah, a nickname that we found simultaneously sad and clever.
We soon learned that Eureka and wider Humbolt County had been at war with the impacts of meth addiction in their communities for several years, and Old Town Eureka is well-known to locals as a hub for addicts. Alex and I had noticed a handful of seedy-looking characters as we pulled into Eureka the day before, but nothing about the area had triggered any alarm bells for us. Maybe we had been lulled into a false sense of security by our stylish accommodations, or maybe our ability to sense any malevolent ambiance had been dulled by years of living in Los Angeles. Whatever the reason, we were certainly caught unawares.
In the end, the entire ordeal cost us about $500 out of pocket for repairs, new passports, and other related expenses. It could have been worse, and $500 was a small price to pay for our tremendous negligence. As for any criminal charges, the police were not hopeful about finding the perpetrator(s) and we were never interested in pressing for a deeper investigation.
Despite my numerous and well-documented empathetic deficiencies, I have never felt any hate for the faceless person who broke into our car that night. Theft is desperate, and I know next to nothing about the kind of true desperation that would compel me to steal someone else’s belongings. I hope to never know what it feels like to live in a world that is so dark and lonely. A world in which a person’s every action is driven by a relentless, frantic impulse to procure something that only serves to destroy everything that is good in their life. There is nothing to hate about a person who lives in that world.
But did you really need to take my fucking boots?!
Next stop: The Lost Coast
