The Craziest Coincidence I Ever Experienced

A true crime travel story

This is a story about a coincidence. The event was minor, but it still crosses my mind regularly.

But first, some background…

In December 2016, I was on winter break between my first and second semesters of grad school. I wasn’t broke, I had a car, and it was my first chance to travel from my new home base in central California.

So, I decided to do a road trip along the US/Mexico border. This would involve cruising down the California coast, entering Mexico at Tijuana, and visiting a few spots near the borders of Mexico/California and Mexico/Arizona.

For the second time in my young life, a Republican had just lost the popular vote but won the presidency. This particular Republican had spent the past year firing up his base with this call-and-response routine:

What are we gonna build? A wall! Who’s gonna pay for the wall? Mexico!

If it wasn’t for the heightened attention around the border that year, I probably wouldn’t have thought to go there. But, as a curious, idealistic, and egotistical public policy grad student, I simply had to see this complicated region with my own eyes.

I loaded my bag and my tent into the Prius and headed for Route 101.

It was major road trip #2 for this vehicle and I. We’d already meandered through the nation’s belly from the east coast to California. Now, we would hit Mexico. That summer, we would venture north to Canada. By the time we parted ways, she had seen the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the southern and northern national borders, and crossed the entire US two times. She was a trusty (and incredibly fuel-efficient) companion.

In Tijuana, I couchsurfed with a new local friend. She showed me the spot where the border fence extends into the ocean to prevent migrants from swimming into the US. It was a chilling sight to take in on a cold and misty evening.

After leaving Tijuana, I drove east along the border, watching this same fence endlessly continue across the landscape, etched into mountainsides and scrawled across the edges of towns.

Of course, what I really sat down to write about today is the epic coincidence that I experienced while I was in Tijuana.

It concerns hubcaps.

First of all, I want to note that despite my affection for my old Prius, I’m not a “car guy.” Beyond what’s necessary for keeping the thing moving, I don’t think much about the parts or workings of a vehicle. And I can honestly say that before this trip, I don’t believe I’d ever so much as deliberately looked at my hubcaps before, much less photographed them.

But, the day I arrived in Tijuana, as I parked my car, I took notice of some mud streaks on my hubcaps. The local roads were extremely rough and muddy, and they’d left their mark. I found the brown lines on my silver hubcaps to be aesthetically pleasing.

So, I snapped a photo:

The photo isn’t particularly impressive, which makes it even more bizarre that I chose to capture the image. I’m not someone who’s constantly taking photos, and hubcaps had never before been an object of interest for me.

Here’s where things get weird.

The next day, I returned to my car, and the hubcaps were gone. More specifically, two of them were gone — the two on the side that was next to an empty parking space.

I stared in disbelief. I had noticed their absence right away, since, for the first time in my life, I happened to be extra attentive to these little metal plates. Apparently, so was a local thief.

So, for the second time in two days, I crouched down to photograph one of my tires — this time, without the pretty hubcap:

I was alarmed to realize that I’d been robbed, but I soon confirmed that the car had not been broken into and nothing else was stolen or damaged.

What I learned is this: if someone is going to steal something from your car, hope that it’s the hubcaps. They aren’t meaningless (they protect the wheels) but they don’t serve a critical purpose. You don’t need to rush to replace missing hubcaps.

After realizing that nothing else was taken and that my car was still in working order, I felt strangely grateful. The robber(s) could have done much worse.

Most of all, I was struck by the enormous coincidence that for the first time in my life, I had noticed — and photographed — my hubcaps… and then they promptly disappeared.

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