A Pizza Delivery Car Got Stolen and Returned with More Gas and a Lotto Ticket

It's been a rough month for pizza delivery drivers. Actually, who are we kidding? It's always rough out there for pizza delivery drivers.

Between the beatings, robberies, and occasional machete attacks, it's not exactly the safest line of work, but it's one that we report on pretty frequently as a way to give props to the brave men and women who deliver pizza for a living. And, honestly, their stories are… well… crazy.

Like that of St-John's, Newfoundland pizza delivery driver Josh Cook, whose car was stolen while he left it running in order to run up to an apartment and deliver a pie. Cook was left without his car—his livelihood—in the middle of a Maritime blizzard on a Friday night.

But much like the Philly pizza guy who received the largest police shooting settlement in the city's history after being shot 14 times by undercover cops, there was a bit of a silver lining here as well.

Cook's car was eventually returned to where it had been stolen and with even more gas in the tank. "I was a bit shocked," Cook told MUNCHIES. "On one hand they trash my car and steal everything on the inside, but they leave me with a full tank of gas. I don't know how I should feel about that. Maybe we've got the most considerate skeets on the face of the planet here."

They also took most of his heavy metal CD collection. "I'm a pretty big metal fan and I still use CDs. They took everything, my Black Sabbath and Black Label Society albums. But they left my Pride and Glory album, which is one of the best albums that Zakk Wylde ever recorded. So I'm thankful for that. But all my best albums are gone."

So the joyriders here were not complete assholes. That's the good news. The bad news was that despite having no aesthetic dings, the suspension, transmission, and exhaust of the pizza car were all badly damaged. "They were driving around like assholes," he says.

The weirdness doesn't end there. Inside the car, he found a small shovel in the back seat and a scratched (losing) lottery ticket, and this telltale lotto ticket could be the key to figuring out who took his car.

"The last four numbers are unique to the convenience store it was sold at. The cops are investigating, but we have a phone number to go off of, too. When the delivery was called in, the number on the receipt was different from the one of the caller ID. "

Josh says he understands the dangers of delivering pizza. "It's a job that I've done on and off since 2001," he says. "I've seen some things and I've worked with guys who've been held up and robbed during their shifts."

But usually, the main issue he has to deal with is brutal Maritime snow and storms. "I've gotten to the top of Signal Hill in a blizzard; I was standing with a guy's pizza, waist-deep in snow and he's like, 'Why are you even out in this?'"

The main reason he trudges on is that he has to pay bills. Not just his own, but for his disabled mother, which adds insult to injury.

"When you take someone's livelihood away because you want to go on a joyride or see your dealer, it's like a slap in the face."

And while he's not holding his breath to find out who did this, it has forced him to reevaluate things.

"With any luck I should be able to get into some form of vehicle and get back to work. I want to get out there and get a regular job where I don't have to worry about this kind of thing happening."

Good luck, Josh.