Before Rachelle Dawdy could drive solo in her 16th birthday present, somebody stole it. Her black 1995 Honda Civic, newly upholstered in Lumberjack red and black, was taken the night of July 18 from in front of her family’s home in the 500 block of 15th Avenue, Longview.

The garage, where the car usually was kept, was being cleaned.

“That night I thought, ‘I ought to put it back in the garage — no, I’ll do it tomorrow,’ ” said her mother, Shana Dawdy. “If only I could go back in time.”

Shana and her husband, Brett, gave Rachelle the keys to their well-tended Civic last September, but Rachelle didn’t take driver’s training until March. She was due to get her license on her 17th birthday, a year after she was given the car.

“It’s not that she wasn’t mature enough or responsible enough — she was just too young,” said her mother. “I made her wait a whole year.”

“I drove it like five times,” said Rachelle, a junior at R.A. Long High School. Four drives were with her mom and the fifth — to Rainier Days in the Park — was with a friend.

Mastering the Civic’s stick shift was a challenge, she admitted. The driver’s training car is an automatic.

“It got 40 miles per gallon,” her mother said. “It was immaculate. It had less than 500 miles on the tires. The whole engine had just been gone through … new spark plug wires, new fuel pump, everything.”

All they have left is the old stereo — they just put in a new one for Rachelle — the keys and the title, she said. The insurance doesn’t cover the theft because they carried only liability, she said.

There was no sign of broken glass where the locked car had been parked, she said. Many thefts of Honda Civics and Accords involve the use of “shaved” or altered keys, according to police reports.

Shana Dawdy said she doesn’t want to have to remove her vehicles’ spark plugs every night like one of her neighbors does.

“It’s not like a lesson well learned because I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

The Dawdys reported the theft to Longview police. It’s one of numerous recent thefts of Honda models.

“The police said it’s probably gone through a strip shop already,” Rachelle said, but the hopeful Dawdys drove up and down several streets looking for it. Shana Dawdy put the theft on her Facebook page, checked Craigslist and made fliers.

“We put 250 fliers out saying ‘Stolen Honda’ at Wal-Mart, Safeway, Fred Meyer and Lowe’s,” Rachelle said.

They’re still hoping it hasn’t been chopped and will turn up abandoned.

“(Police) say it could take a couple of days to a couple of weeks to recover,” Shana Dawdy said. “They might dump it on the side of the road.

“I can replace the pieces on the car as long as the engine and the body’s there,” she said, “but I can’t replace something that I don’t have.”

Related article:

Car thieves zero in on Hondas  (June 22)