The story behind the car that did a runner back to Glenhazel

Law abiding Johannesburg accountant Dani Smith is grateful and relieved not to have been arrested and charged for stealing a car last weekend.

The honest father of four would never in his wildest dreams consider “stealing” anything, let alone someone’s car.

However, this is exactly what he did, albeit inadvertently.

In a bizarre comedy of errors last Sunday, Smith, who lives in Glenhazel, found himself driving home from a running race in Benoni in what he thought was a friend’s car. Fellow runner Oren Kirkel had given him his car keys during the race when Smith battled to run with a niggling calf injury.

Kirkel suggested to him that instead of hanging around for hours waiting for them to complete the race, he should go home. He said not to worry, he would catch a ride afterwards with their other running friend, Yossi Unterslak, with whom Smith had originally driven.

Grateful for the gesture, Smith accepted the offer and took the keys. It turns out that Smith got into the wrong car of exactly the same description parked in the very same location. However, unbeknown to Smith, the vehicle belonged to another runner, Steven Isaacson, who, bizarrely, also happens to live in Glenhazel, a stone’s throw away from him, although the two had never met.

Smith drove himself home, had a hot bath, and nursed his calf injury. It was only hours later that he found out that he had the wrong man’s car parked in his driveway.

It all started when Smith entered the Comrades Marathon-qualifying Benoni Northerns Marathon last weekend with a bothersome calf. At the crack of dawn, he drove to the Benoni Northerns Sports Club with Unterslak.

About 16km in, Smith felt his calf worsen with each step. Soon afterwards, the pair bumped into Kirkel along the route, who suggested that Smith call it a day and take his car home.

“He gave me his key and said look out for the white Landrover with the black roof parked behind the swimming pool,” says Smith.

“That sounded easy enough.” He got a ride along the way from a random stranger, who also happened to be in a white Landrover, who dropped him at what he thought was Kirkel’s car.

“I pressed the key button to open the car thinking it strange that no lights flicked on, but the door opened easily enough,” he says.

He says he noticed two race envelopes in the car addressed to two different people: Steven Isaacson and Jared Bloch. He automatically assumed that Kirkel had collected their race numbers on their behalf, as runners do.

“I pressed the start button as instructed, the car started, and I drove home,” said Smith.

Isaacson, the owner of the car, had left his keys inside his car so that whichever of his group finished first could have a place to rest while waiting for the others to finish.

“In hindsight, it wasn’t a wise move, I know,” says Isaacson, who got the shock of his life when he didn’t see his car after the race. To compound matters, the car actually belongs to his wife, Tracy. He decided to take it without telling her at the last minute at 05:30, just in case there was a shortage of parking and he had to ramp a pavement to park.

“I was convinced my car had been stolen,” said Isaacson. “It wasn’t where I knew for sure I had parked it.” With the absent car was his cellphone and wallet, as well as Bloch’s phone (who had travelled with him), and all the belongings inside, including his wife’s paraphernalia in the boot.

They set about trying to work out what happened, even speaking to a man who had parked in his exact space who told them it was the only space left available when he arrived at around 08:30.

Isaacson immediately set about reporting the “theft” to his insurance company to get the tracking process underway, which included locating his cellphone. The app alerted his son that the phone was around the corner from their house in Glenhazel.

“My son chided me, thinking I had used his sister’s name when downloading the phone tracking app because she was at a meeting at the time somewhere in Glenhazel,” said Isaacson.

Meanwhile, Kirkel and Unterslak were totally perplexed when they saw that Smith hadn’t taken Kirkel’s car so many hours later. They immediately contacted Smith.

“Yossi asked me where I was and obviously, I said I was at home,” said Smith.

It was the start of a frantic mission to track down the rightful owner of the car, the only clue being the race envelopes inside the vehicle. There was no point phoning Isaacson as his phone was inside the “stolen” car.

After some time and much confusion, Unterslak finally tracked down Isaacson on his wife’s phone and informed him of the “massive misunderstanding”. This coincided with a call to Isaacson from his insurance company informing him it had tracked the vehicle, which was around the corner from him, and a crew was on its way.

“What are the chances,” says Isaacson, “I mean, how crazy?”

Smith, who drily relayed the hilarious events on Howard Feldman’s Morning Mayhem show on ChaiFM on Monday, said the word “stolen” was a “harsh” word.

Responding on Facebook to the broadcast, Isaacson’s wife, Tracy, said, “The car belongs to me! The story was on another level of crazy. Something from a Mr Bean movie clip.

“I really believed our car was stolen. Not only did I begin to cancel our credit cards, curse the country – and my husband — but, I also began to make peace with all the precious belongings I’d left inside my car. We began the process of changing bank-login details and passwords as we thought that a sophisticated syndicate had manipulated the location details to state that our car was close to our house when as far as we knew, it wasn’t. The chances of our car resting comfortably around the corner was totally baffling! After finding out the story behind our story we couldn’t stop laughing about it for the rest of the afternoon!”

After the sublimely choreographed confusion, the men eventually found each other, car keys were exchanged, and all’s well that ended well in suburbia.