The Kind of Story We Need Right Now: Mom Hunts Down Her Stolen Car
A Kansas City-area mom turned her stolen Dodge and a strip-mall Applebee’s into the best true-crime caper Seth Meyers had seen all year.
On a July 2019 episode of Late Night, Seth Meyers ran a segment he called “The Kind of Story We Need Right Now,” and for good reason — after weeks of grim headlines, he found a story with an actual happy ending. It centered on Danielle Reno, a mother from the Kansas City area whose car, wallet and phone were all stolen at once, and who decided the cops weren’t going to move fast enough for her liking.
- Reno tracked her stolen vehicle herself using recent credit card transaction records and the Find My iPhone app, which pinged her phone’s location to an Applebee’s on North Antioch Road in Gladstone, Missouri.
- She used a spare key to drive her car away from the restaurant’s parking lot while streaming parts of the recovery live on Facebook.
- A friend who staked out the Applebee’s watched suspect Lindsey Custer, 27, walk to a nearby Discount Smokes and Liquor store, leading to Custer’s arrest on charges of tampering with a motor vehicle and receiving stolen property.
Reno Successfully Tracked Her Vehicle
Most people who get their car stolen file a police report and wait. Reno filed a report too, but she didn’t stop there — she started pulling her own credit card activity, looking for charges that would put the thieves somewhere specific. Combined with the Find My iPhone app tracking her stolen phone, the digital trail pointed her straight to an Applebee’s parking lot in Gladstone, a Kansas City suburb just north of the river.
The Recovery at the Applebee’s
Once Reno had eyes on her car, she didn’t wait for backup. She had a spare key, and she used it to simply drive the vehicle off the lot herself, narrating the ordeal in a live Facebook stream so friends and followers could watch it unfold in real time. It’s the kind of moment that made the clip spread fast online — a mom recovering her own stolen property on camera, mid-plan, mid-adrenaline.
Custer’s Arrest
The recovery wasn’t a one-woman operation. A friend of Reno’s stayed behind to watch the restaurant and spotted Lindsey Custer, 27, walking away from the scene toward a nearby Discount Smokes and Liquor store. That tip led to Custer’s arrest, and she was ultimately charged with tampering with a motor vehicle and receiving stolen property.
Meyers’ Take
Meyers framed the whole thing as the rare feel-good crime story, contrasting Reno’s initiative with the usual feeling of helplessness people get scrolling the news. He joked that instead of just watching the news and feeling powerless, Reno watched Taken and applied it directly to her own missing Dodge.
Meyers cracked that Reno deserved her own crime-investigation show on TNT.
It’s the same instinct that makes late-night hosts mine viral clips and cold opens for material — the kind of bit you’d see land near a Saturday Night Live cold open or get the deep-dive treatment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Meyers didn’t need a graphics package or a correspondent piece, though — just a mom, a spare key, and a friend willing to loiter outside a liquor store to make an arrest happen. Custer got booked; Reno got her car back and a shoutout on national television, which by the standards of 2019 news counted as a genuinely good week.
What Really Happened To Grace Under Fire’s Brett Butler
Why We’re Worried About Kaley Cuoco
Inside Ryan Gosling And Eva Mendes’ Relationship
What Really Happened To Grace Under Fire’s Brett Butler
The Truth About Teen Heartthrob Noah Centineo