Windsor man gets his stolen pickup back after online investigation

A Windsor man was reunited with his stolen truck Thursday and a suspect was arrested, after a three-day hunt in which an army of Facebook gumshoes helped track the purloined pickup online.

When someone drove off with his Toyota Tundra on Monday, Nick Keresey of Windsor took matters into his own hands.

After reporting the theft to authorities, Keresey tapped the power of Facebook to help him find the suspected thief and his missing pickup. Keresey posted a picture of the truck and his license plate Monday evening. Friends and friends of friends began sharing the post - more than 500 shares in all, he said.

Keresey would get several significant clues that set him on his own search, and within a day, he had a photo of the suspect. Within two days, he had recovered some of the items from the truck from a garbage bin at a car wash in Santa Rosa where one poster reported seeing the truck.

Keresey’s investigation ended Thursday afternoon with the arrest of the suspect by the Santa Rosa Police Department. Keresey got his truck back, no worse for wear but for a nearly empty gas tank.

“We see it quite often as far as posting stolen vehicles throughout (social media). It’s really helpful,” said Adam Wirtz, a Petaluma detective assigned to the Sonoma County Auto Theft Task Force.

Santa Rosa police recovered the truck at a gas station near Piner Road and Coffey Lane, said Sgt. Dave Linscomb, who could not release the name of the man police arrested there. Linscomb said the auto theft task force was investigating the incident, and Wirtz could not be reached for further comment Thursday evening.

Keresey was pulling turkey out of the oven at ?2:45 p.m. when he received a call from Santa Rosa police telling him his truck had been recovered.

“The truck was fine; it came back in great condition. But a huge thank you to all the people who got involved,” Keresey said. “It’s just been an amazing outpouring of support from the community.”

Keresey, a 37-year-old district manager for a spirits and wine distributor, said his wife, Mandy, discovered the truck missing Monday.

The crime was odd, Keresey said. The suspect entered the unlocked house, and grabbed the keys off his dresser.

He didn’t take anything else of value, but helped himself to a snack - a box of wine-filled chocolates, a pint of Pliny the Elder beer, an $8 wedge of cheese and two bagels.

Hours after Keresey posted the photo of his truck, a friend of a friend he had never met logged onto Facebook, saw the post and thought she recognized the truck as the same vehicle she had seen at a Petaluma gas station earlier in the evening.

The woman said she had encountered a sketchy-looking guy at the Union 76 station, who had asked for change for coffee. He reeked of alcohol, she reported. But what made her suspicious was the fact that the guy looked derelict, had panhandled change and yet was driving a fairly new truck.

On Tuesday, Keresey went to the gas station on North McDowell Boulevard and said he was told by someone who works there to check out the 7-Eleven. There, he was shown a surveillance video of a guy who had come in the night before, shoplifted some cigarettes and tried to drive off in a white Toyota Tundra.

“They chase him to the truck. He gets in. They open the passenger door and grab the beer and a backpack on the front seat. Some paperwork on the seat from the truck comes flying out. It was my receipt for an oil change,” Keresey said.

Another tip Wednesday led him to a car wash in Santa Rosa, where he found in a dumpster some of his children’s toys and the empty chocolate box.

Keresey on Wednesday night got intel through Facebook of another sighting at a mini mart in Santa Rosa.

“There were over ?500 shares of my post and a lot of people private messaging me,” he said on Thursday. “It was nice to see everyone involved.”

Staff Writer J.D. Morris contributed to this report.