In 1998, Gierke said his father was forced to sell the Corvette because of financial issues. Five years later when Gierke received his driver’s license, he went on a search for the vehicle in hopes that his first car would be the one he remembered “being 4 years old and going for rides with my dad in.”
Unfortunately, the corvette ended up being nowhere near his first car, and this search became a series of unfortunate events.
When Gierke called the auto company his father had sold the car to, officials there told him they had recently destroyed the document, which they do every five years.
“I spent the next nine years searching once a week for the car online,” he said. “Sometimes my search slowed down, but I never quit.”
He finally discovered the website Instavin, which for a fee told him that the car was last registered in Arkansas. That prompted him to create Craigslist postings in that state asking for help locating the Corvette. To his surprise, it worked.
“Complete strangers were contacting me with information on cars they had seen, going to dealerships to verify VIN numbers on cars that looked similar, and offering suggestions on where to look,” Gierke said.
His search ended when one Arkansas man went to the state DMV and paid to find out who owned the car for him. After a little negotiating and an 11-hour drive, Gierke said he was reunited with the car he had not seen for 15 years.
“The search that had consumed so much time had finally paid off,” Gierke said. “I remember the owner talking, and telling me stuff about the car, and I was just completely zoned out. I just kept looking at it, remembering when I was a kid.”
The Corvette now has a permanent residence inside his Enon garage.
“It is an everyday reminder not to give up, no matter how impossible what you are going after seems to be,” he said.
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