Their car was stolen. When they got it back, it had Lyft stickers and 11,000 more miles.

Cierra and Josh Barton purchased a new Honda CRV at the beginning of summer. It was stolen while parked in front of their Livermore apartment complex at the end of August. Four months later, Hayward police called the Bartons to say they had recovered their vehicle.

"What condition will it be in? Burnt out? Gutted?" Cierra Barton recalled thinking as she and her husband drove to the holding lot. "I was imaging the worst when we went to pick it up."

What they found, to their surprise, was a car in relatively good shape – a few dents, a rattling hood. But in the back and front windows were Lyft stickers, Cierra Barton said. The odometer had spiked from 2,000 miles to more than 13,000. And in the back seat, Cierra said she found a pillow, a jacket and a stuffed animal.