Malinda Crichton was faced with an unusual dilemma last week: she woke up, took her dogs out and saw that her house was missing.
One of them, anyway. Crichton rents a cottage in West Sacramento, California, while she builds a 285-square-foot house, which she plans to live in once she finishes construction. The tiny home on wheels, which she keeps parked about 50 feet from the house she rents, wasn’t in its usual spot Tuesday morning.
After its disappearance sunk in, Crichton called the police to report a missing home. Crichton also called the property managers for her rental to check that they hadn’t towed the house, asked neighbors if they had seen someone take it and called local news stations hoping to get the word out.
“The longer I waited the further away they could be driving with my tiny house,” she said. “They could have been even three states away.”
Around noon, Crichton asked a man she knew who was driving by if he had seen anything, and it turned out he had seen her house parked a few miles away, behind some shops in a strip mall. She paid a towing company to bring it back, and in less than 24 hours after it was stolen, she had it back safe and sound ― and locked up more securely.