After a long day of hustling and bustling through airport terminals, dealing with long security lines, and being cooped up on an airplane, there is nothing that a traveler anticipates more than hopping into their car and heading back to the comforts of home.

However, when one Boulder family returned to the Denver International Airport after a week's vacation, they were at first, unable to even recognize their own vehicle, let alone able to hop into it and drive home as they had so planned.

The Kaufman's Silver Audi SUV was missing four essential assets to get the family back to their Boulder home — the tires.

With a loss that is estimated to be around $5,000, the vehicle was stripped of all four wheels and tires while parked in the west economy lot at DIA. The thieves left the dismantled SUV  in the lot sitting on top of car jacks.

An incident like this happening at DIA is very rare, as they have staff members and police that carry out routine patrols around the parking lots, as well as take inventory of the parked vehicles. Denver police are currently investigating the theft.

Due to the immobile status of their car, the Kaufman family, in turn, had to take a taxi cab back home to Boulder from the airport, costing them an additional $140. Besides that, they had to leave their SUV in the lot for an extra two days and hire a tow truck driver to come and install new tires. DIA has agreed to reimburse the Kaufman's for the additional time that they were forced to leave their car in the lot.

You could say that this Boulder family had a "wheelie" bad ending to their week's getaway.

 

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