The case of the missing Fiero

Thurman Williams loves his car. It's a red 1988 Pontiac Fiero, a mid-engine, fiberglass body collector's car he bought while in college six years ago to replace a prized 1968 Ford Mustang. Fewer than 3,600 Fieros like it exist. Williams, a well-dressed, articulate, soft-spoken man who works for a national nonprofit neighborhood revitalization organization, doesn't believe in buying cars that depreciate. "I think it's a waste of money," he says.

To him, however, the Fiero is more than an investment. Last year a guy offered to buy the Fiero for $6,000 -- at least $2,500 more than it's worth on the open market. But Williams wouldn't sell. The guy was going to chop it up and turn it into a Ferrari, and Williams couldn't let that happen to his car. "It's a good old American automobile," says Williams.

Williams loves his car so much that he doesn't like to drive it, keeping the mileage low and the car in good condition. So when he left his Mission, Kan., apartment on a rainy night in January to go out with some friends, Williams chose to drive his other car, a 1989 Crown Victoria, and leave his Fiero safe and secure in The Falls apartments parking lot.

But he returned home later that night to find nothing but a dry spot on the otherwise rain-soaked pavement where he had last parked his cherished car. It had been stolen -- or so he thought.

He called the police and filed a report on his missing car. The next day, the police department told Williams they had found his car. It hadn't been stolen, just towed to Heritage Tow in Overland Park at the request of The Falls apartment complex. Williams was furious. He headed to the manager's office for an explanation.

As it turns out, nine days earlier, on Dec. 30, Mission codes enforcement officer P.J. Richardson had noticed that Williams' vehicle didn't have a current registration sticker on its license plate, a clear violation of City of Mission Code 8-403, which prohibits vehicles that have missing, expired, or invalid license plates or are mechanically inoperable from being within the Mission city limits. And because the Fiero was on the apartment complex's property, the complex faced a possible fine for the vehicular nuisance.

The problem is, Williams' car was registered in the state of Kansas. But in an odd turn of events that, Williams claims, began with the theft of the registration sticker, the Fiero got towed and has been sitting in the storage lot of Heritage Tow racking up a daily storage fee of $20. And now Williams is in danger of losing his beloved Fiero forever.

His vehicle wasn't the only one deemed a vehicular nuisance in The Falls' parking lot. During his sweep of the lot that day, Richardson noted a total of 14 cars that violated the code. It was the first time the 700-resident complex had been patrolled for nuisance vehicles.

Code enforcement officer Steve Miller explains that although the code is not new, the city has recently increased its enforcement effort. "It was enforced in the past only in extreme cases," he says, "like if someone buys a real junker and drops it in the yard, and we say, 'Get that thing out of here.' We'd really crack down after complaints from citizens who say, 'This old car has been sitting here for four years and we want it gone.'"

The city, however, recently hired a new codes enforcement officer and decided to step up its effort. The Falls patrol was part of the first citywide sweep regarding the vehicular nuisance code, and since that effort began, the city has identified more than 100 nuisance vehicles, the majority of which either had expired plates or flat tires. Only occasionally has the city found what Miller calls "an old junker." If those in violation of the code fail to remove their vehicles or make them operable as defined by the city, they are then ticketed and must go before a judge, who may order a fine.

After the sweep of The Falls, the city ran the offending vehicles' license plate information through the Kansas Division of Motor Vehicles registration database to obtain the owners' contact information. But for reasons that have yet to be fully explained, when the officer ran Williams' plate, a personalized plate that read "COYOTE," it didn't come up. The officer failed to record the Fiero's Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), which also could have been used to find the owner.

On Jan. 3, the notices pertaining to each vehicle were delivered to the complex's management, with owner information on all but four vehicles, including Williams'. The next day, the complex staff put notices on the vehicles whose owners were not identified and began contacting those who did come up in the registration search to let them know their vehicles would be towed.

Williams, who says he never saw a notice on his car, even when he went to get something out of his seldom-driven Fiero the day it was towed, argues that the apartment complex didn't do enough to notify the owners. If he had known, he says, he would have shown them his registration, which proves his car is current through November 2000. "If I'm gone on a business trip and I'm, like, a day late on my rent, they're able to find me just fine," he says.