FOLEY, Ala. — Arthur Holk will tell you candidly that the 1988 Mercury station wagon with 260,000 miles isn’t his wife’s favorite vehicle.

“She’s been wishing for years that somebody would steal my old car. She won’t even ride with me,” he said this week.

Still, the well-known civic leader and former mayor of Foley, whose 20-plus year old car is almost as recognizable locally as the man himself, never thought the vintage wagon he bought second-hand six or eight years ago would ever fall into the wrong hands.

As he points out, why steal a ‘88 Mercury when you can steal a Cadillac or something else? With that thinking in mind, Holk tossed the keys to the Mercury on the floorboard a couple of weeks ago.

As Holk tells it, the station wagon was running hot, so he took it to a local garage. He was told the car needed a new radiator cap, so he got one. By the time he drove back to his home in Foley, however, the car was running hot again.

Disgusted, that’s when he threw the keys on the floorboard. The car stayed parked for a couple of weeks … almost. Apparently, the car went for a ride the night of Aug. 20.

It was the following morning, and Holk was reading the newspaper at his home in Magnolia Springs. He received a call from an Escambia County, Fla., deputy sheriff, who asked him if he owned a 1988 Mercury station wagon.

Holk’s reply: “Yeah, but it’s in my yard in town.”

According to Holk, a “subject” from Lillian who might have had reason to know the ‘88’s keys were on the floorboard took the Mercury from Holk’s driveway. The subject drove the vehicle east on U.S. Highway 98, over the Perdido Bay Bridge in Lillian and into Florida.

A couple of miles or so on the other side of the bridge the Mercury began running hot, so the driver pulled off the main road and into a subdivision. He started unloading the station wagon’s considerable cargo.

“I had everything I owned in (the car),” Holk said with a laugh.

The subject took the items from the car and hid all of it in the woods, covering everything with elephant ear plants. He took the car’s license plate off too.

“A military man saw this going on from his house and thought it was fishy,” Holk said, so the man called the police.

The driver got back in the station wagon and headed back toward U.S. 98, but the car ran hot again. He stopped, and that’s when the law arrived and arrested him.

When Holk and his son, Andy, got to where the station wagon was parked, the military man who had made the call to the authorities stopped and talked to them. He told them to drive the car to his house, and he would fill the radiator with water.

They did, but water continued to boil out of the radiator; that’s when they knew the problem was a faulty thermostat. The military man, who doesn’t want to be named according to Holk, said he would put a new thermostat in for them. Holk gave him a twenty for the part.

The man ended up driving the car back to Foley, wouldn’t take anything for his trouble, and even gave Holk back $12 and change from the twenty.

“This is so unusual,” Holk said of the man’s generosity and kindness.

As of Tuesday, Holk had yet to see the man who allegedly stole perhaps the best known vehicle in the City of Foley. The former mayor was riding around, however, with some of the alleged culprit’s belongings that were left in the car when the man was arrested.

The subject had pried off the vin number on the dashboard and spray-painted the area with white paint. Also, Holk said the subject appears to have sprayed lighter fluid all over the Mercury’s hood, which leads Holk to believe he was going to burn the vehicle.

“I got every bit of my stuff back except maybe a couple of golf clubs,” Holk said.