Congratulations on Being a Good Human No. 1 – Bizarre Stories of Extraordinary Human Acts

Congratulations on Being a Good Human – Car lover and stolen “mechanical companion” reunited.

What’s a person to do when their prized Volkswagen beetle gets stolen?

Not mine, of course (the only “vehicle” I prize is a 1992 pontoon boat with burgundy pleather seats). A guy named Jason who is a senior writer at a site called Jalopnik (you know, like Jalopy). It’s a quirky investigation of all things cars.

Jason’s prized Volkswagen beetle (with a snazzier custom paint job than the one pictured above) got taken.

And he did what any current day lover of cars would do: he told everyone on every blog and social network he could that his mechanical companion had been stolen and asked them to help him locate it. He plagued them day in and day out to be on the lookout.

Several days went by with no word, but then lo and behold guess what happened?

One blog reader on his way to work took some pics of a car that matched the description of Jason’s and posted them on the internet, tagging Jason. But Jason, who didn’t yet know who posted the pics, still didn’t know where the car was. So he reposted the pictures of his own car in some unidentified neighborhood.

That’s when a second blog reader went into action.

Using Google maps, he began scanning the area for neighborhoods that matched the characteristics of the neighborhood that housed the car in the photos. The clues? A green house, a blue FJ cruiser in the background, a hill, and a retail store. And within 30 minutes, he reported back to Jason that he had it. He found the same green house that even showed the same FJ cruiser.

Jason’s car had been stripped of its engine and otherwise vandalized. But in the end, his community–which he calls the “Jaloposhere”–combined their resources to reunite a blogger they had never met with his long lost car. (You can read his whole story, which contains a little colorful language, here.)

So the next time you hear someone complaining about what technology subtracts from our connectedness (like I do sometimes), take hope: It brings people together too.