This story by John Lippman was first published by the Valley News on Sept. 21.
NORWICH — The mystery of a car that was stolen in the dead of the night from a farm in Norwich and then vanished has been solved. Now the car’s owner has invited the thief to a dessert party because of the bond they share.
The safe and happy outcome on Thursday began with an unsettling scene caught by surveillance cameras early the previous Sunday morning. Footage showed an older man in pajamas shuffling about Sweetland Farm before driving off in a red 2017 Honda HR-V, which had been parked behind the farm store and belonged to one of the farm’s employees.
Shelagh Harvard, a Sweetland Farm employee who lives in a house behind the farm store, said she happened to be awake reading in bed in the early Sunday morning hours when she heard “revving in the driveway” from outside her window.
She said it was not unusual for her to leave the keys in her car. “It’s a farm, you know,” Harvard said.
At first, Harvard told the Valley News in an interview Thursday morning, she thought the motor sound might be coming from a vehicle belonging to guests who had been attending a wedding party down the road and were using Sweetland Farm’s store lot for parking.
“But then I thought a few minutes later, OK, what if it’s not and I got up to look out and my car was gone,” Harvard said. Although it was past 3 a.m., she immediately called 911 to report that her car had just been stolen.
Harvard, who has managed Sweetland Farm’s farm store for three years, has only owned the bright red 2017 Honda H-RV for a few months.
The farm store has outdoor surveillance cameras, and when Harvard and police reviewed the video footage, it showed images of an older man dressed in what appeared to be pajamas and carrying what looked like a blanket or clothing in one arm and wandering about the property.
Camera footage also captured the man struggling to maneuver Harvard’s vehicle with him “reversing the wrong way … he had a heck of a time just getting out of my driveway, like five minutes just to get to the road” before heading south on Route 132 and vanishing out of the camera’s range, Harvard related.
Vermont State Police, in a news release asking for the public’s help in locating Harvard’s stolen vehicle, said it was last observed “traveling into Hanover.”
Hanover Police Capt. Michael Schibuola said police had received a “be on the lookout” alert for the red Honda H-RV and a “possible vehicle matching the description was seen on a camera going south” on South Main Street toward Lebanon. The information was passed along to Lebanon and Hartford police.
After that, Harvard’s car appeared to vanish into thin air with no further sightings.
But Harvard said what she saw on the surveillance video did not strike her as a typical car theft. For one, the video showed that the trespasser was on the property for about two hours, opening the doors of other vehicles parked in the lot and seeming not to be in any hurry.
“You wouldn’t take a couple hours to do that,” Harvard said. A real thief “would be in-and-out.”
Harvard said what she saw on the surveillance appeared to be the behavior of person who might be suffering from something of which she is familiar — dementia.
Harvard is the niece of Andy Harvard, a world-class mountaineer who ran the Dartmouth Outing Club. He died at age 69 in 2019 after being diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer’s 10 years earlier.
In 2008, claiming performance issues, Dartmouth fired Andy Harvard, an alum, from his post as director of the outdoors program. Nine months later, he was diagnosed with the uncommon form of dementia that strikes people younger than 65.
He and his wife, Kathy Harvard, battled Dartmouth for years to get the college to recognize that his disease was at the root of the reasons for his dismissal, but they were not able to reach a settlement.
“My fear was that it was an elderly man who lives alone and nobody’s reported missing and therefore he is not missed and is in trouble,” Shelagh Harvard said.
Shelagh Harvard contacted Norwich Community Nurse Mary Stevens to ask whether she knew anyone who fit the description of the man in the surveillance video.
She also posted notices on the Hanover, Thetford and Stafford Listservs, asking people to “please help find my car” and noting camera footage shows “an individual that police say may be an elderly male allegedly involved in the theft.”
Stevens said when she watched the video of the shadowy figure shuffling about her reaction “knowing what I know about what people with dementia look like” was that it depicted “someone who was confused and looking for something.”
Stevens in turn shared the video with the community nursing group’s board chair, the town’s former community nurse and Norwich’s fire chief to ask if the man in the video could be anyone they might be familiar with.
“None of them recognized him,” Stevens said, which only increased worries that the man “must be somebody who lives alone. Where did he go? It’s concerning.”
Stevens said she even took it upon herself to drive roads nearby Sweetland Farm, such as Academy Road and Kerwin Hill Road, to look for a red Honda H-RV perhaps parked in a driveway.
But without any trace of Shelagh Harvard’s car, the unidentified man “could have driven it into the river for all we know,” Stevens said.
Shelagh Harvard’s decision to post a plea on online bulletin boards turned out to be a smart move.
On Thursday afternoon, Shelagh Harvard said she was contacted by a woman who lives near Sweetland Farm to report that Harvard’s car was at her ex-husband’s apartment at his senior living residence in West Lebanon.
The woman said her 81-year-old former husband, for whom she has been caring while his dementia worsens, was staying at her Norwich residence on Saturday and unknown to her had wandered off in the middle of the night. The next day the woman received a call from people at her former husband’s senior living complex reporting that he was walking around and “appeared confused,” Shelagh Harvard said the woman told her.
Shelagh Harvard said she does not know how the woman realized that her former husband had driven back to his residence with her car. But in any case the woman made the connection to Shelagh Harvard’s car and the red Honda H-RV at her former husband’s residence when she read a post on one of the online bulletin boards.
“She was apologizing a bunch and I said, ‘You know what? I totally understand and I’m so glad he’s OK and nobody else is hurt,’” Shelagh Harvard said, telling the caller that she is very familiar with dementia due to the experience of her uncle, Andy Harvard.
By happenstance, Shelagh Harvard added, she informed the caller that on Oct. 4 she plans to host her Third Annual Dessert Night Alzheimer’s Walk Benefit at her aunt, Kathy Harvard’s, home in Hanover.
Shelagh Harvard organizes the dessert party annually to raise awareness and funds for dementia research in advance of the Oct. 26 Alzheimer’s walk in Hanover.
“She said, ‘That would so wonderful. This is so isolating. It would just be so nice to be with people who understand what I’m going through,” Shelagh Harvard said.
On Friday afternoon, after Shelagh Harvard had gone to West Lebanon to retrieve her car, she confirmed that the woman would be attending the Oct. 4 dessert party for Alzheimer’s research with a plus one: her former husband.
