A family was overjoyed when their stolen truck was found undamaged by police and returned to them. After their insurance paid to have the truck deep-cleaned, they thought everything was back to normal—but the threat they faced afterwards was invisible.
“We were relieved to get it back,” Jake Culver said. “We were relieved right up until my wife’s friend told her about her experience with a stolen car.”
The Culver family of Pierce County already had their ride back, a 2002 Ford F350, when concern started to set in.
“She asked us, ‘Had we had it tested for drugs?’ And we said, ‘No, why would we?'” Jake said.
Using the same company their insurance hires to test for biohazards, Jake believed the report would come back negative. Instead, it showed traces of methamphetamine exceeded national safe exposure limits by eight times, while fentanyl returned two times higher than acceptable.
“My wife just broke down in tears when I told her the results of the test,” he said. “My heart sank. If she had inhaled the fentanyl or something like that, I mean, who knows where we’d be right now.”
The Culvers feel their insurance failed to protect them, considering the company often tests for the presence of drugs in stolen cars before they’re returned, but didn’t for the Culvers.
“I expect the people paid to help us through these troubles would actually do their job, and that’s more shocking, frankly, than the drug use and the car theft,” he said. “We can’t undo the exposure my family experienced, but we can hopefully educate other people who do get their cars back or are about to get their cars back that they need to have these things tested every single time. Without question.”
Culver now blames the insurance company for failing to test for illicit substance exposure inside the pickup truck, noting that the firm — not named in the report — often conducts such evaluations.
“I expect the people paid to help us through these troubles would actually do their job, and that’s more shocking, frankly, than the drug use and the car theft,” he said.
“We can’t undo the exposure my family experienced, but we can hopefully educate other people who do get their cars back or are about to get their cars back that they need to have these things tested every single time. Without question,” Culver said.
The good news is that the family was riding in the tainted vehicle for only a week before the test results revealed the toxicity from multiple drugs.
On another level, however, the family’s ordeal is emblematic of the opioid crisis in America — and the liberals who have enabled it.
