STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS

After a full day at work, Bernadine Wood was anxious to get home at the end of her day Thursday.

“I got off the (Woodside) ferry and couldn’t wait to get home, just ran to my Tucson in the parking lot with many other vehicles around,” she said.

But getting home was going to take a while.

“When I turned the vehicle on I thought it was some other car that started up next to me that had some terrible problem with their engine,” she said. “But then I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s me,’ and turned the ignition off, and the sound stopped.”

With wishful thinking she turned the car back on and off a couple more times with the same results.

She called for a tow truck, but her mind almost immediately turned to her catalytic converter being stolen because it had happened to a friend of hers.

“It was clearly an exhaust sound. This car has not had a problem or any indication of a problem,” she said.

“It’s just so distressing. You feel this panic about what’s wrong, and what am I going to do, and how am I going to get home.”

As she sat in the parking lot she heard another vehicle with the same noise.

“I jumped out of my vehicle and tried to wave it down as it drove by me making the same sound,” she said.

It turned out that vehicle was driven by one of Wood’s co-workers, who assumed she developed a muffler problem.

“There’s two of us for sure. If there’s two, there’s probably more,” Wood said.

She said she felt shock at first.

“My mechanic said those parts are really hard to get and he didn’t know f they were going to be able to get one”

That left Wood’s head spinning trying to figure out how she will adapt to being without a vehicle for a possible extended period of time.

She said she is expecting a bill of more than $1,000, but much more if the part can’t be found and she has to buy a new vehicle.

She said that for now she can grab a bus to get to the ferry and to work, but she won’t be able to go to pick up lumber and supplies for renovation projects at home, or out of town to visit family or go hiking.

She doesn’t know if it’s feasible to rent a car, “but I’m hearing there aren’t a lot available anyway.”

Her co-worker went to the terminal to ask about the security cameras in the parking lot, but was told they weren’t working.

Even so, Wood said she wouldn’t have an expected this in such a busy spot.

“It was in broad daylight, the terminal is close to Highway 111 and Pleasant Street. That’s a busy spot,” she said. “There’s a McDonald’s across the street, shopping and restaurants. This is not an out-of-the-way spot. There are lots of other vehicles around and it was broad daylight.”

Dwayne Richard of Added Touch Towing in Mount Uniacke took Wood’s car to her mechanic. He said he’s been getting plenty of calls lately for vehicles that have had their converters stolen, including from rental car lots.

He said the thieves are getting more brazen.

“I can’t get over it, I really can’t. In the broad daylight, of all things,” he said. “I just can’t get over that no one sees what’s going on. Either that, or people are seeing it and thinking people are there working on the car or something. But you need some kind of cordless saw and it makes a racket.”

Const. John MacLeod with Halifax Regional Police said the thefts are a persistent problem.

“It’s certainly been a trend,” he said. “It’s all over HRM, it’s not like there’s one spot. It’s important when it happens for people to call it in, as it could show there are trends or patterns that would be helpful to us.”

He said there’s not much people can do to prevent the thefts. They can park in well-lit areas and have motion sensor lights in  the yard, “but if someone is really intent on doing it, it’s fairly quick. It’s not a long process for these guys to get in and out and steal it.”

The converters control emissions on a vehicle but are made of precious metals that can make them valuable as scrap metal, police say.

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