VENTURA, Calif. — Whoever reported their vintage 1956 powder-blue Ford Thunderbird convertible stolen from a San Francisco Bay Area suburb 31 years ago may get a phone call this summer with some very good news.
      Thirty-one years to the day after the car was stolen, the '56 T-bird was recovered by an industrious California Highway Patrol officer in Moorpark. And if Palo Alto police can dig through boxes of their paperwork from 1976 and find the original theft report, and if the original owner can be located, the car will be going back.
      "It's a cool little car," said CHP officer Christopher Throgmorton, admiring it outside the Moorpark CHP station. "I got to drive it over here, and it runs really good, except the brakes are really hard. That was kind of scary."
      The T-bird is clean and in perfect condition, its original V-8 engine flecked with a little rust but overall quite impressive. Someone has added seat belts — powder blue, of course — to the front seats.
      It looks just like the white '56 T-bird that a young Suzanne Somers drove in the movie "American Graffiti," except this one has a canvas top.
      A married couple whom Throgmorton would identify only as eastern Ventura County residents "bought the car off some guy in Ohio on eBay and had it shipped out here."
      One of the new owners tried to get license plates for the car at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Unable to find a vehicle identification number, the DMV sent the woman over to the CHP Moorpark office, where Throgmorton has developed a regional reputation for knowing just where to look for VINs on old cars.
      Throgmorton keeps cans of carburetor cleaner and rags ready for this task, which he says is becoming more frequent.
      "It seems like more and more people are cleaning out old cars with suspicious backgrounds and getting rid of them on eBay," the CHP stolen car expert said.
      Last week, as the new owner waited, Throgmorton opened the T-bird's hood and worked on a greasy, grimy section of metal frame below the sparkling V-8 engine. He shined the small patch of metal to a brilliant greenish silver, and then saw found a small set of letters and numbers emerge that had been hand-cut into the frame with a chisel-die set in Detroit half a century ago.
      National databases list stolen VINs dating back decades online, and a few clicks on the office computer informed Throgmorton that he had to tell the Ventura County woman she had just driven a hot car down to her local CHP office.
      "She just looked at me and went, like, You're kidding me — are you serious?' " Throgmorton said. "I think she had no idea it was stolen."
      The officer said eBay's popularity is causing more stolen vehicles — "and dirt bikes, especially dirt bikes" — to come out of garages and storage areas. "We're getting them every day from DMV now. You'd be surprised how many people come in with stolen cars they've bought off eBay."
      The only recourse for someone who loses a car or bike that was innocently purchased and turns out to be stolen property is to sue the seller, Throgmorton said.
      No one from the eBay corporate offices in San Jose returned a phone call on the topic. Palo Alto police said they had just gotten the CHP request for help, and said it may take a few days to retrieve the 1976 records from a storage site in another city.
      Records from that far back are likely not computerized, meaning somebody up north is going to have to look through a lot of files, Throgmorton said.
      The statute of limitations has long expired on any possible car theft, meaning no criminal charges can be brought against whomever stole it, Throgmorton said.
      If the person who reported the car stolen can be located, the car goes either back to him, or to the insurance company that may have paid off the owner.
      "A lot of times the insurance companies will offer it back to the owner for a small payment," Throgmorton said. "It all depends on the circumstances."
      But, if no owner or insurance company can be located, the car goes back to the Ventura County couple. "I don't suspect them.. I'm looking at them as victims in this," Throgmorton said.
      Until the paper chase is exhausted, the car—with 24,979.4 miles on the odometer—sits in the locked CHP yard in Moorpark, attracting a crowd and turning heads, the way a powder-blue 1956 Ford Thunderbird convertible does.