Grand Theft Auto

Rodney and I were itching for a joy ride. We were 18 years old, high school was almost over and our bodies were twitching with testosterone.

There were just two problems: neither of us owned a car, and the driving age was 21. We lived in Hong Kong, and our parents were Southern Baptist missionaries. The cars they drove were owned by the mission, and we were strictly forbidden to drive them.

Our caper was as well-planned as The Great Train Robbery. We scoped out the cars of every missionary who lived in our neighborhood, and discovered that the preacher's car was the only one with an automatic transmission. We at least had the good sense to steal a car we could drive without stalling.

I nabbed my mom's purse, removed the keys to the mission office, then rode my bike to a lock smith nearby and had them copied. I replaced the originals on my mom's key ring before she noticed they were missing, then set up a time to meet Rodney to begin phase two of our plan.

This involved going to the mission office at night, letting ourselves in through the main gate without being noticed by the night watchman or any of the missionaries who lived there, then getting into the office itself. Once inside, we made our way to the glass case which housed a duplicate set of keys to every car owned by the mission, labeled with a little white tag bearing the license plate number.

Using a flash light, we scanned the rows of keys until we found the one we were after, then I pried the locked sliding glass door open with my finger tips just wide enough for Rodney to slip a bent coat hanger through the narrow gap and fish out the keys we needed.

We were in the middle of this precarious operation when the night watchman came by on his rounds. We had to drop the key and stand as close as possible to the wall, so that when he shined his flashlight through the window he wouldn't see us. Our hearts pounded as the beam swept the floor a few inches from our feet....if we got caught we'd have a hard time explaining what were doing in the mission office after hours with a bent coat hanger sticking out of the case where the car keys were kept.

Once we were sure we had been undetected, we fished the keys out, took them to be copied, then replaced the keys, all in the same night.

With uncharacteristic patience, we waited a few weeks to make sure that no one had seen us coming and going and reported this to our parents, and then I asked my folks if Rodney could spend the night. About 3 a.m., we snuck out of the house, walked the half a mile or so to where the preacher's car was parked on the street, and began our adventure....Rodney drove first.

After cruising around for a half hour or so, we decided to go through a tunnel which would take us out of the city and into the New Territories...the part of Hong Kong which joins Kowloon, where we lived, to mainland China, and where there were fewer traffic lights and less likelihood of encountering any cops.

Or so we thought.

By this point, I was behind the wheel, and no sooner did we emerge from the tunnel than we spotted a police road block ahead, looking for illegal immigrants sneaking across the border from China. I instinctively hit the brakes and slowed down, which of course attracted the attention of the police, who motioned for us to pull over.

As I pulled onto the shoulder, I glanced around and noticed that there were several green- uniformed members of the Royal Hong Kong Police, but no police car! I floored the accelerator...spraying gravel all over the cops who were chasing us on foot and easily out-running them in their futile attempt to catch us.

We took the long way home, circumnavigating the mountain range we had just driven through, knowing that by now they had used their radio to issue an all points bulletin for our arrest. We got back to our starting point a couple of hours later, the fuel gauge dangerously close to empty, parked the car and high-tailed it back to my house, slipping in the back door without waking anyone.

A couple of weeks later, Rodney's family was invited to lunch at the preacher's house after church. Rodney was a couple of bites into his mashed potatoes when the preacher announced that every time he left the house, he got pulled over by the police, who told him that his car had been spotted running a police road block at 3:30 a.m, driven by two Caucasian males.

Rodney just about choked on his food, but held his breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was the preacher about to reveal the identity of the 2 culprits? As it turns out he was as mystified as everyone else in the room...and Rodney managed to swallow his food without asphyxiating.

It's been 30+ years since our escapade,the preacher has long since crossed over the River Jordan, and the two car thieves are still at large. Here's a photo of Rodney and me taken last year when he flew in from Florida to buy a used garbage truck, but that's a story for another time.