61-Year-Old Grandmother Helped Ohio Police Chase Down a Stolen Car in 28 Minutes

Angie Kovach lets the dog out at quarter past six. She has done it every morning for nine years, in a robe, with the coffee going.

“I stood there trying to remember whether I’d parked on the street,” she said. “I was convinced I parked it in front of my garage door.”

“I went to look around the corner of my house to check both ends of the street, and it wasn’t there.”

Then she remembered what was still in the back of the car.

Her granddaughter had stayed the weekend. The overnight bag came inside on Sunday night. The rest of it didn’t.

“Her scooter. A beach towel. And Susan,” Kovach said. “Susan’s a rabbit with one ear. I gave her to my granddaughter when she was two. She doesn’t sleep without her.”

Kovach is 61 and quick on her feet. She was already moving.

Most people, at that point, call the police and then wait.

Six months earlier she had slid a tracking card up behind the sun visor and hadn’t touched it since.

Her first thought was that the battery would be dead.

She rushed back inside and opened the Find My app.

Luckily, it was still pinging.

And to her surprise, the car hadn’t left the city. But it was a long way from Ridge Road.

And the dot kept moving.

“I thought,” she said, “I’d better get the police to chase this thing down.”

Kovach called police at 6:22 a.m. She told the dispatcher what she was looking at: the road, the direction, the fact that it was still going.

Detective Burns came on the line and asked her to spell the street name. Then he asked her not to hang up.

“He never told me to get off the phone,” she said. “That’s the part I think about.”

The nearest unit was already moving.

For the next several minutes Kovach sat at her kitchen table in her robe and read out street names as the map refreshed. The dot crossed the river. It turned north. It slowed.

Whoever was driving had tried to tuck the car in behind an old warehouse.

But officers were already around the corner.

A 24-year-old man was detained at the scene. He has since been charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle.

The detective had rung off when the units closed in. At 6:50 a.m. he called Kovach back himself.

There wasn’t a scratch on it. The stereo was still in it. The scooter and the beach towel were still in the back.

“We’ll bring it home to you,” the detective told her. “I want to thank you personally for helping us get it back this fast.”

Detective Burns says the outcome is not typical. Roughly three in ten vehicles reported stolen in the county are recovered the same day. After two days, the chances of getting one back fall away sharply.

“Most people can only tell us what was taken,” Burns said. “She could tell us exactly where it was and where it was heading. That’s a completely different level of information.”

He says the case is not as unusual as it used to be.

“We’re seeing these little trackers turn up all the time now. In cars, in luggage, in wallets, in sports bags — people put them in everything,” Burns said. “There’s more of it every year, and I’ll be honest with you, it makes our job a lot easier.”

Then, half joking, as the detective wrapped up the interview: