Georgia Woman’s Very Special Wrangler Found After Being Stolen

By Detroit Steel - March 11, 2015

Thiel-Sharp

When any Jeep is stolen, we feel for the owner, which is why we started running Stolen Jeep Alerts here at JK-Forum. But the story of this stolen Wrangler left us a little more troubled than most.

The Jeep, which was stolen from Diane Thiel-Sharp in Decatur, Georgia on March 1, was a gift from her late husband, Kevin, who wanted to fulfill his wife’s high school dream of owning a Jeep, as reported by Decaturish.com.

“It was just a week before my 45th birthday and little did I know, he had purchased the jeep and had held it in storage waiting for the birthday party he was planning that weekend,” Thiel-Sharp told the Georgia news outlet in a Facebook message. “You see, when we were in high school I saw a girl driving a white jeep and decided then that girls and Jeeps are an incredibly cool combination. I told Kevin but never really thought I would ever get to be one of those cool girls. I was 16 and he was 17.”

Over the years, Thiel-Sharp’s dream of owning a Wrangler began to take a backseat to bigger joys in life, like raising their children. However, a day after her husband’s funeral she got the key to a Jeep wrapped in a little box, which Kevin was planning to surprise her with before he died in an automobile accident.

“I was surrounded by my dearest friends and family,” she said. “Some of whom had driven hundreds of miles to be with us when they got the news of Kevin’s death. We all went out to the parking lot and there it was, complete with a huge bow he had bought for the occasion. It is still hard to put into words what that meant to me.”

The good news is that police have since located the Wrangler, according to a post on Thiel-Sharp’s Facebook page. “Apparently the thieves took it for an off- road joy ride and in the process smashed the tailgate as well as the back window attached to the hard top,” she wrote.

Thiel-Sharp is still waiting to hear from the insurance company as to the fate of her Jeep, but at least she doesn’t have to worry about its whereabouts anymore.