By Angel Perkins News-Mirror Editor
When we park our vehicles and lock the door before leaving it, we assume that our belongings inside will be kept safe. We know that unless someone has a special tool or breaks a window, they won’t be able to enter.    
But, what if they have that same exact key you have hanging from your ring? Odds of that may seem slim, but frighteningly, aren’t as one local woman found out recently.
“My 1997 mini-van was ‘stolen’ in mid-January when I parked it outside  Country Road grocery,” she said. The vehicle was parked on the corner of Main and Center Streets while she shopped for about 10 minutes.     When the Bourbon woman, a first grade teacher at Argos Elementary School stepped out with her purchases she found her green Aerostar missing. At first she had trouble accepting the fact that it was stolen and looked up and down the street for it before she called the police, and her husband Barry.

“I did not lock the doors but the key was in my coat pocket,” Wampler said. “With 175,000 miles and several dents, I didn’t consider that thieves would be interested in it!”
Thieves may not have been but an unsuspecting man, Jose Ortiz, who was trying to do a favor for a girlfriend, was. Mary Ousley of Rochester had left her dark Ford van at the Deaton-Clemens Funeral Home parking lot because it was not running properly. She had left a note on it asking that it not be towed and shared her intentions to have it removed as soon as possible.
She asked Ortiz to collect it for her and gave him the key to do so. He did, or so he thought.
Bourbon Police Officer Bill Martin was on duty that day and was on the case. He said he ran the vehicle’s license plate and traced it to Rochester and then called a towing company in Rochester to see if perhaps they had been sent to tow it and instead, by accident, taken Wampler’s as the vehicle was so similar to the one missing.        “The VIN numbers were similar and I called to reach her,” Martin explained. “I talked to the Rochester Police and the towing company.” He shared how Ortiz, after driving the vehicle around and seemingly finding it to be running just fine  became suspicious that some of the personal belongings inside the vehicle didn’t seem to be Ousley’s.                “He called Officer (Gary) Collins and reported it,” Martin explained. “He (Ortiz) came from work to meet with us about it.”
Ortiz had parked the vehicle at a home on Harris Street and when Officer Martin came to investigate further, Ortiz told him that the key Ousley had given him fit in the ignition.
“I put the key in and it started right up,” said Martin. After calling Wampler and explaining the story the mini-van was returned to its rightful owner.                             
“It was a great relief to hear from the police later that night that the car was located and how it was mistakenly ‘stolen,’” Wampler said. “I was also surprised that another key would start the ignition!”                    Apparently, so were the others involved. “It was the first time for me,” admitted Martin.
Buzz Keck, General Sales Manager for Tim Martin Buick Pontiac GMC of Plymouth said, “There’s a very small chance that that will happen; it would be like being struck by lightning.”         Keck said that it wasn’t unheard of however, but in the 35 years he’s been in the car business he’s only seen it a couple of times. “There are millions of key codes,” he said. “But if it is worn (as it may be with an older model vehicle), or the tumblers (inside locking mechanisms) are worn it’s more likely to happen.”
And if the vehicle is one that the one key unlocks both the doors and starts the ignition, it is likely to open the door even if it is locked. “It’s not common but I have seen it before,” he said. But it wouldn’t work with different makes.”
“A GM (key) might work on a GM, a Ford on a Ford,” Beck explained. “Now they (car manufacturers) are having problems with the newer models because they’ve run out of key codes. The new Cadillac STS is a push button code entry.”