A man’s first car has a special place in his memory.
Joshua Gierke of Enon, Ohio wanted his first car to be a very special one – a 1978 Corvette that he remembered riding in with his father as a 4-year-old.
Unfortunately, by the time he got his driver’s license in 2003, the Corvette was no longer in the family as Joshua’s dad had sold it five years earlier in 1998 because of financial issues.
It took Joshua 11 years, but he finally was able to locate that special car thanks to a persistent search, the Internet, and the help of many strangers. Now the Silver Anniversary Edition Corvette occupies a permanent spot in his garage.
The search began when Joshua was just 16 years old, with a call to the company that his dad had sold the Corvette to, but they delivered the bad news that they had just destroyed the documents as part of an every five year cleaning-out process.
Joshua didn’t give up, though.
“I spent the next nine years searching once a week for the car online,” he said. “Sometimes my search slowed down, but I never quit.”
He eventually paid a fee to the website Instavin, and they were able to tell him the car had last been registered in Arkansas. After seeing Joshua’s subsequent post on Craigslist asking for help finding the Corvette, a stranger in Arkansas went to the state DMV and located it for him.
After negotiating with the current owner, Joshua traveled 11 hours to the small town of Elkins, Ark., to buy the long-sought-after Corvette.
“The search that had consumed so much time had finally paid off,” Gierke said. “I remember the owner talking, and telling me stuff about the car, and I was just completely zoned out. I just kept looking at it, remembering when I was a kid.”
Joshua is all smiles now that he has been reunited with his dad’s old Corvette.
“It is an everyday reminder not to give up, no matter how impossible what you are going after seems to be,” he said.
Source:
Dayton Daily News
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