The tale of when my car got stolen at TTC’s Finch parking lot

It was Easter Monday, March 24, and both of my parents had the day off of work but lucky for me colleges and universities were still open. For the first time the entire term I borrowed my mom’s 2004 Toyota Matrix to help reduce my nearly 1 to 1.5 hour commute to school. I had a long day at school preparing for our event that was approaching in a couple weeks.

I return to Finch subway station’s parking lot at around 4 p.m. only to not find my mother’s car. I walked around wondering if I had merely forgotten where I had parked, in my half-awake state of mind at 7:30 a.m. I thought to myself that maybe my mom or dad had come to the parking lot and moved the car for some strange reason and forgotten to tell me. To be honest, a stolen car was the last thing that occurred to me.

I called up my parents, at home enjoying their long weekend, saying to my mom, “I think I lost your car.” They drove to the parking lot to pick me up and we drove around for probably another 30 minutes up and down every aisle with my mom pressing the panic button on her key chain hoping for the alarm to go off. We even checked the west parking lot (as Finch station has two and I parked in the east lot).

It was then my dad called the police/insurance company to report the stolen car. At this point I accepted the fact that I hadn’t lost the car and it was stolen.

Naturally I was very upset and felt guilty that if I hadn’t driven that day the car wouldn’t have been stolen. My mom said to me that, “we were victims of a crime and it wasn’t our fault,” which was comforting to hear.

Fast forward three weeks and we receive a phone call that the car had been found sitting in a parking lot in Barrie, ON. We’re still in the process of dealing with the insurance company which has been anything but pleasant.There was no damage to the car besides for a piece of the passenger-side door handle being broken off. They even somehow had a key to the car we have no idea how they got so they didn’t even hot wire it. (I don’t really know the ins and outs of stealing a car). It’s suspected those who stole the car were planning on selling it abroad which is why it wasn’t damaged or sold for parts.

I googled to see what information I could find about cars being stolen from TTC’s Finch parking lot and didn’t find much information. I’ve heard through word-of-mouth that approximately 1 car gets stolen from the Finch parking lot per day. I found this article about a woman from Markham that, only a few weeks before my family’s incident, had her Toyota Corolla stolen from the Finch station parking lot.

I was very frustrated to read the uninterested response she received from the TTC when asked why they don’t have any sort of security at the lot with, “you park at your own risk.”

The woman from the article was quoted, “I told the TTC that I park at the far end of the lot. I said, ‘If I get killed, you have no cameras.’ They said, ‘That’s your tough luck.’ They actually said that to me.”

I wondered what information the TTC’s useless website had about the security in its parking lots. All I could find was “TTC Safety,” that merely list the most obvious of “practical steps.” You would have to be stupid to not follow these steps already. Talk about stating the obvious!

At this point I don’t care to pursue this issue further with the TTC as it seems they do not care about what happens to car theft in their parking lots from that article in the Star.

Fortunately our car was recovered, despite the fact that both the mechanic and the body shop guy told us we’d be better off not having the car recovered with all of the crap we will have to deal with insurance now.

One last point. I doubt the police will have enough time to investigate who stole our car, but they do have lots of time to shell out speeding tickets to those who drive 10 km over the speed limit. What’s the real crime here?