Last night I met Margaret after work and we went for a lovely meal at the Gaslight. We really enjoyed the meal and it’s always great to reconnect after a busy week. After dinner Margaret wasn’t feeling too well so rather than collect her car we decided to leave it parked across from her hair salon.

This morning we decided to go for breakfast and on the way we passed the salon and the car parked across the road. This was around 8.50am. After a fry-up and a read of the papers we headed back to collect Margaret’s car. When we pulled up to the car park at 9.40am the car was nowhere to be seen!

The little navy mini is literally Margaret’s pride and joy. While I often eat in my car while I’m rushing from one spot to another, she doesn’t allow any food in car and she religiously cleans out and washes her car every week. Last week I overheard her telling my dad how much she loves it and of her long struggle to save up for and then find the little car.

Back to this morning and as I called the police, Margaret headed inside to get something…and then I heard her cry “Donal, they broke in”. Thank god they didn’t wreck the place, but they had kicked the back door in, stole a laptop, GHD’s and Margaret’s car keys which they used to steel her car. As you can expect Margaret was really upset so I used my phone and hers to put a message on Facebook to spread the word and to ask our some 3,000 friends to spread the word and to call the police if they saw the car (you could not miss Margaret’s car as it is branded with the salon’s name, which she only opened four weeks ago). The word spread like wildfire and we were contacted by Newswire NI and then the BBC who also spread the word. Straight away we started receiving a flood of comments from people who couldn’t believe it and offered their support.

Meanwhile the police arrived and then CID and CSI they explained how they thought it was unlikely the car would be recovered not crashed or burnt out. After getting the door repaired we headed home and just felt so sick about the whole thing. Then we started getting messages from people who spotted the car! There was reports of one car that was burnt out and another which was outside someone’s house. Amazingly we found the car parked less than a mile from where they stole it. Thankfully the car was not damaged apart from a dent on the front, but some items had been stolen, including some pairs of shoes Margaret had bought but not even had on yet!

Later we went to my brother Conal’s Christening of his new son, Darragh and we were on a high to have got Margaret’s car back. It really shows you the power of social media. Had we not spread the word it would be unlikely that we would have got the car back. So thank you Facebook and all our friends on there – it’s good to connect and share!