It’s one thing to cover the news, but it’s another to have reported on it and then become the news. Just ask Molly Walsh, a crime reporter with Cleveland.com who first wrote about, and then became one of the countless Kia and Hyundai owners who were victims of car thefts in America.
Walsh recently shared her experience, stating that her Kia Forte was stolen on December 30 while she was sitting with friends, just yards away from her parked car. The fact that she was so close to her 2020 Kia Forte made it even more shocking when she left the house and discovered her car missing. In a photo, she displayed remnants of automotive debris on the street where her car had been parked.
“I am able to laugh at the irony: The crime reporter who covered the Kia Boyz had her Kia stolen,” wrote Walsh on Cleveland.com. “But the jokes are just a mechanism to cope with the struggle that I, and thousands of people nationwide, must fight through.”
Read: Hyundai And Kia Offer New Ignition Cylinder Protector To Help Prevent Thefts
She writes that after discovering that her vehicle had been stolen, she went to the police department to report the crime. Less than a week later, the Forte had been found, but she still doesn’t have it back because of the heavy damage it sustained.
As much as a mobile office space as a car, Walsh says she wrote articles from the passenger seat of her Forte while she was out in the field, which makes her loss all the more difficult to live with. Despite losing it, she’s still making payments on the car, which she calls the first big investment she ever made.
And she’s not alone, many victims of automotive theft have to keep making payments after they lose their cars, which can put them in a vulnerable position, unable to afford other means of transportation while the crime is being investigated. That has caused some of the people she spoke to in her reporting to lose their jobs.
While she acknowledges that she was initially quite mad at the individuals who stole her car, she now expresses less anger. She also notes that she lacks faith in the idea that punishing individuals will significantly curb car thefts in Cleveland, as it doesn’t address the underlying circumstances that contribute to such crimes.
“I’ve learned from my reporting, [the perpetrators] are likely youths from communities with less money and more crime than mine,” Walsh wrote. “My privilege does not negate the fact that this is a crime, but demonizing the perpetrator is not an act of harm-reduction.”
In the end, she asks for readers to offer possible solutions. Most intriguingly of all, she asks if the person who stole her car will reach out to her for an interview. I don’t know about you, but if she gets the interview, I’ll be reading.
