As someone who has written the The Daily Item’s police log for two years, it can be entertaining to see what people call or alert the police for, especially in Marblehead.
But on Sunday, I became one of those people, when I couldn’t find my car after parking on a side street in Marblehead and decided to ask the police for help.
In my defense, it was dark out I’m not too familiar with that part of town.
I work on Sundays and was covering a protest in Marblehead at a church that was showing a controversial film. So, as there’s no parking lot at the church, I parked on a side street that seemed a reasonably close distance, something that I figured I could just retrace my steps to.
Well, needless to say, my plan went a bit awry, as I stayed to watch the film and by the time I got out, it was 5:30 p.m. and dark out.
So, I figured that things were still under control and passed the couple of landmarks that I remembered walking by to get to the church — a crosswalk and a state police cruiser. I walked down the street I was pretty sure I parked on and as I got farther down, I still didn’t see my car.
So, now I’m second guessing myself. I walked back up the street and walked down another street, and then another one, and then back to the first one. At this point, about 20 minutes have passed and it’s just getting darker out, and I’m feeling a little stressed.
It’s getting to the point where I’m thinking the worst. Police had been monitoring the protest, and were still standing outside the church where a discussion on the film was taking place inside. So, I walked up to the group of officers and asked, “have you towed any cars tonight?”
The answer, thankfully, was no, there hadn’t been any cars towed in the area, which prompted me to say, well I am stumped then, because I’ve been walking around for 20 minutes and can’t find my car.
Then, the officer offered to radio for help to have a patrol car respond and look for my car. A little embarrassing to require police assistance to find a car that’s a two-minute walk away, but I need all the help I can get at this point, so I just say “I mean, if you want to.”
After calling for backup, he also offers to help walk around with me to look for the car with a flashlight, since this is what I couldn’t handle myself earlier.
So, here we are, civilian and police officer walking around looking for a car — down one street, down two, and can’t find it, which leads him to ask me if I’m sure the Toyota Camry I was looking for was the car I actually drove to the church, which I guess is a fair question since I can’t remember where I parked, so I could also be forgetting what car I took. I assured him that I only have the one car, so there’s no chance I took another one.
Then, I decided to give him some clues, that I remembered walking across a crosswalk and I passed the parked state police cruiser on the way to the church. I also made sure to point out that the town should consider getting more parking lots.
Eventually, we got to what I’m pretty sure was the first street I checked in the journey, but didn’t walk all the way down. So, after walking with him farther down the street than I had before, I gave him the happy news that the Camry we just spotted was, in fact, mine, and thanked him for all of his help, while also apologizing, because I’m sure there were other much more important things going on in town for police to focus on than helping me look for my car.
While embarrassing, I definitely appreciate Marblehead Police for not making me feel more silly than I already did for asking for their help in locating my car. Without assistance, I could have been wandering around for much longer.
