Stolen Trailer Hunted Down By Chatsworth Owner

CHATSWORTH, CA — It’s a story that can sometimes read like an animated Pixar movie, but it’s totally true: last week, a Chatsworth woman was reunited with her stolen trailer, whom she fondly names Pearl.

Stephanie Rain bought Pearl, a vintage teal and white 1967 seven-by-ten-foot trailer, about two years ago. Rain and her husband Erin originally hoped to turn Pearl into a food truck serving one-of-a-kind items like tie-dye grilled cheese and croissant ice cream sandwiches.

Unfortunately, tiny Pearl didn’t have the three sinks that L.A. County requires of food trucks, so the Rains devoted all their energies into rehabbing Pearl to her former glory. They put about $5k into a custom paint job and an entirely new interior. Once Pearl was primed and ready to go, the Rain hosted private parties inside and drove her all over the country.

But on May 31, Rain woke up to a neighbor calling her asking where Pearl had vanished to. Pearl was always attached to Rain’s truck, so the neighbor wondered why the truck was in the driveway but Pearl was gone.

“I just about freaked,” said Rain. She filed a police report, and drove around all the RV parks in the area looking for Pearl. Just to make matters even worse, Rain also learned that day that someone had broken into her office and stolen various office supplies and $50 in cash. At the time, Rain says that police officers were too busy trying to quell a groundswell of George Floyd-related protests to pay attention to either of her May 31 misfortunes.

In the age of social media, the community came to the rescue. A Facebook post about Pearl garnered thousands of shares.

“I cried every time I would wake up in the morning,” said Rain. “Every time I would wake up in the morning it would be 1,000 shares, then 2,000, then 3,600 shares, I thought, this is crazy – I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. I thought especially with everything that’s going on in the world right now, I couldn’t believe that everybody was sharing her. I’m so thankful to everybody.”

Rain said that the shares crisscrossed the country, from Miami to Ohio to Oregon.

About a week later on June 6, one of Rain’s friends happened to see Pearl in the city of San Fernando. Rain said that the woman vaguely remembered seeing a post, so she took photos and emailed them to one of Rain’s friends, who emailed them to her.

She had found her baby.

The Rains raced to San Fernando, worried that Pearl would disappear. Rain called 911 and asked for officers to meet them there, but says the operator told her that police were too busy with protests, and they should consider it a loss because the mission was too dangerous.

“I said, you don’t understand: she’s there, the person who took it is there, and I want my Pearl back,” said Rain. They called a couple of their friends and headed over.

Rain says she saw Pearl right as they got off the 210 Freeway into San Fernando, and Pearl had seen better days. She was covered in green tape and graffiti. They peaked inside to see a hollowed-out inside stripped of all of its appliances and most of its furniture, and instead filled with trash, crack pipes, cans of gasoline, and gang graffiti.

A man approached and asked why they were looking inside his trailer.

“I said, no, that’s my trailer, and you’re a thief,” said Rain. “I have the pink slip, and I have the registration on me, and you better unhook that right now from your van.”

The man told her that he had bought the trailer for $500 from a guy from the recycling place. Rain asked him why he had taped the trailer like he was getting ready to paint it, especially since it was still gleaming from a custom paint job.

“We knew he was lying,” said Rain, who said that the man seemed too out of it to pose any real danger to them.

Eventually they got the man to move the car, and the Rains connected Pearl to their truck. Even though her lights wouldn’t turn on because the man had cut all of the plumbing and wires, Rain knew she had her baby back. When Pearl pulled into the Rains’ Chatsworth driving, the neighbors began to cheer.

But Pearl is still in rough shape, and will need thousands of dollars in repairs. Rain did not insure her because she says insurance companies told her that such an old vehicle would only get a few hundred dollars if stolen.

Nor can Rain count on any justice for Pearl's thief. She said that the police called her back, but told her that if she pressed charges, he would be fingerprinted, written up, and then released.

"He said because Mayor Garcetti is not looking to book anybody right now for thefts, or criminal actions like that," said Rain. "Unless they physically kill somebody, they're gonna let them go."

But like any parent, Rain is just happy Pearl is home safe and sound, and is currently hard at work giving her a "mini-facelift."

“I’m really attached to her – she’s the cutest damn thing ever,” said Rain. “I was crying the whole way when we picked her up because I couldn’t believe she was attached to the back again.”