Christmas miracle achieved: Kansas City man reunited with stolen vintage Thunderbird
Santa came a couple days early for Dick Purucker this year.
The previous week had been all coal for the Hyde Park resident and his wife, former Kansas City Councilwoman Jan Marcason. They woke up Dec. 15 to find their car had been stolen. And not just some old clunker. Purucker had recently returned from Wisconsin, where he’d bought his 103-year-old mother Mary Ellen Purucker’s diamond blue 1962 Ford Thunderbird convertible back from the gentleman she’d sold it to 35 years ago. Two weeks after he surprised her with it over Thanksgiving, thieves snuck into Purucker’s garage and took the T-bird away.
Wednesday afternoon, though, Purucker received the call he’d been hoping for. The police had found a car like his in the parking lot of The Loretto, the apartment building and event space in the Volker neighborhood.
“We went over, and there it was,” Purucker said. “It had been there for at least three days, they said. We don’t know how long it was there, but they couldn’t have gone far, because the mileage was about the same. Evidently they parked it there and covered it with a tarp. But with all this wind we’ve been having, it blew the tarp off. That’s how maintenance and security noticed. So they asked the tenants, whose car is that? And that’s when somebody said they knew it was stolen because they’d seen it in The Star or on KCTV5.”
Purucker said he couldn’t detect any significant damage to the car, a big relief.
“But it’s filthy,” he said Thursday. “Oh, it’s filthy. First thing I’m gonna do today is pull it out into the driveway and clean it all up. But I’m just so happy. Beyond words. Truly, a Christmas miracle.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 12:28 PM.
