Monrovia Grandfather Reunited With Stolen Truck after 38 Years

Reunited 38 years later, Voelker and his '56 F-100 - Photo By Terry Miller

It took the police 38 years, but they finally found Monrovian Harold Voelker’s 1956 Ford F-100 truck which was stolen from Los Angeles in the early 1970’s.

“I was shaking,” Volelker said when he got the call from Modesto Highway Patrol saying they believe they found the truck he bought in 67 and reported stolen in the summer of 1972.

Harold Voelker left the workplace en route home but couldn’t find his truck It was parked at Washington and Vermont in Los Angeles in the morning and by quitting time at 3pm, it was gone.
The then 27 year old Voelker immediately filed a police report and got a call from authorities a few weeks later.

Once before, police thought they had found the stolen truck. “We found your truck,” one chipper officer told him, and an elated Voelker went to reclaim his automobile. But it was a false alarm. The thieves had switched the license plates, and the original pink slip and Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) simply did not match the number on the truck.

The years passed and Voelker went on with his life: oil painting and collecting cars as well as working for ABC TV on the show “Castle”. What, I asked, did Harold Voelker do for the studios?

“Transportation” he quipped!

While Voelker was chatting to the Monrovia Weekly, he kept getting interrupted by numerous well-wishers who heard the news via the grapevine including a local insurance company representative who wants to insure the 1967 classic.

Perhaps it was his good sense of humor and strong family that includes seven grandchildren that kept him going until he received a call last week from a car theft specialist at the California Highway Patrol in Modesto, Officer Greg Bennett.

Bennett knew immediately that he had the correct man after some clever police work that dated way before computer records were kept. Talk about cold case files.

Voelker, drove up to Modesto from Southern California with his wife, Valerie to get the vehicle and was stunned to find the vehicle in such excellent condition, an unusual occurrence in the case of stolen cars.

Voelker proved he owned the truck beyond any reasonable doubt as, amazingly, he still had the original pink slip in his possession from the original purchase back in 1967.

Thanks to an honest Modesto couple – albeit a bit upset about having to give the truck away to its rightful owner – and a keenly diligent officer in Modesto, Voelker is again in possession of his beloved F-100.

Since the theft in 1972, the truck has had at least two different “owners” including the couple that surrendered the Ford plus a Modesto woman who was given the truck by her father in Texas and had owned it for 11 years.

Two weeks ago, when the Modesto couple took the pickup to the DMV in Modesto for it’s annual registration, a DMV official was suspicious of the VIN number and sent them to the CHP office in Salinas for a closer look. According to the CHP, the vehicle’s original VIN had been covered with a false number. But the VIN number on the truck’s door didn’t match the one in the cabin interior.

Not everything is back the way it was, however. When it was stolen the truck was yellow, since then, it has been painted a pristine white. According to Voelker, someone must have really put some money into the truck. it now has alloy wheels and has even had a brand new engine put in since it was stolen.

“It’s better than when I last had it in 1972,” said Voelker.

– Photographs by Terry Miller

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