SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Camper-like van stolen from tourists in Seattle’s Capitol Hill
Jul 19, 2018, 3:54 PM
Capitol Hill resident Sean Sheffer’s parents and three younger brothers piled into the family van to make the trek from their home in Las Vegas to Seattle for a Pacific Northwest summer getaway.
Don’t picture any typical soccer mom van, however — the Sheffers’ Chevy Express is essentially a DIY camper. It includes a queen-sized bed, electric fans, four solar panels, a portable toilet, a ladder, and a rack. The van has been the pet project of Sheffer’s dad for over a decade, and provides the family with a place to stay while on road trips.
“It’s decked out — it has all the bells and whistles that you could imagine,” Sean Sheffer said.
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Sheffer moved to Seattle about two years ago and was excited to show his parents the city that he has made his home, as well as to get out of town and see some of Washington’s natural beauty together.
After spending Sunday touring Bainbridge Island, Sheffer’s parents parked the van in a paid parking lot on Boylston Avenue for the night. Upon returning to the vehicle around 7 a.m. the next morning, however, the van was nowhere to be found.
“It just disappeared,” Sheffer said.
The family knew that the van, which had been locked all night, had been stolen rather than towed because its window shades had been thrown out. Sheffer, his parents, and his siblings were unable to process what they were seeing.
“We couldn’t comprehend that this had happened,” Sheffer said.
Besides the loss of their treasured camper, and their clothing and possessions for the trip, the Sheffer family now is also without the means to get back to Las Vegas.
“We sat down in Pike [Place] Market and had to debate how we’re going to … get them home,” Sheffer said.
He never expected that thieves would go after a vehicle that old, or that they would dare to hotwire it from an area of Capitol Hill that is normally filled with people all night.
“We knew that the risk of theft is always there, but for something that old — a 2003 big van — we didn’t expect [it] … especially in a neighborhood like Cap Hill, where you have the police department just a few blocks away, and all these eyes and all this activity,” Sheffer said.
Sheffer believes that the van was targeted because of its out-of-state plates. He finds the crime all the more shocking because the stickers on the van’s back windshield depict the eight members of the Sheffer family.
“Whoever did this knew it was a family car,” Sheffer said.
The Sheffer family is still searching Seattle for their van and asks everyone to be on the lookout. The 2003 white Chevy Express has a black rack on its roof, a ladder on its back doors, and Nevada license plates with the number 216PWX.
