New wheels after car stolen from church
It was his pride and joy, until some ‘‘cheeky bugger’’ stole it.
Don Graeve was at his regular Sunday night service at the Gore Baptist Church when someone stole his beige 1982 Ford Laser.
‘‘I thought you cheeky bugger. I went back inside and told everyone and they were upset and I told them all to calm down.
‘‘There was nothing we could do about it. The car was gone, the cheeky bugger.’’
He’d been driving the Laser for 16 years.
‘‘It was the GL model – it stood for Grand Luxury. A guy signed it over to me and he’d bought it for his daughter to drive to University in Dunedin. It had 35,000km on it when I got it but I hadn’t done much in it – it was a bit of a shopping trolley for me.
Graeve had been paying into an account at Regional Ford’s Gore dealership for the maintenance on his car.
When he went to cancel the account, staff swung into action.
‘‘He’s been a customer of ours for 12 years with his Laser and he had maintained it very well – it was extremely tidy,’’ dealer principal Nathan Abernethy said.
‘‘He doesn’t have a lot and when he came in to cancel his account and told us someone had stolen his car from outside his church and he couldn’t afford to get a new one we decided to help him out to get him into a new car.’’
Regional Ford staff members held a car wash and auctioned donated goods online and along with a donation from the church, raised enough money to pay for a 2003 Ford Focus Ghia, which was presented to Graeve yesterday.
‘‘I’m blown away,’’ he said as the staff whipped a cover off to reveal the new red car underneath.
He was a tad speechless as Abernethy guided him to the driver’s seat. ‘‘I’ll need to be shown all the bells and whistles.
‘‘My old car had a push-button radio but this one has volume controls on the steering wheel and air conditioning and a CD player. ‘‘I’ve even got my own air bags.’’ Graeve promised to look after his new wheels as well as he looked after his old ones.
‘‘I look after everything I’ve got, I have a bit of a thing about that.
‘‘I’m very thankful to the people behind the scenes that have helped me. I never went far in the old car but now I can go out of town without worrying that I’m going to break down.
‘‘I’m stoked.’’