Here's how a 19-year-old fan helped a popular influencer find his stolen car by only using clues from social media

• YouTuber and streamer Ludwig Ahgren posted a "cry for help" video about his 1997 Subaru Sambar being stolen last week.
• Fans quickly got to work trying to piece together clues. One Reddit user ended up rescuing the vehicle.
• The user told Insider he's a longtime fan of Ahgren and felt lucky to have found the car.

Catastrophe struck the world of popular streamer Ludwig Ahgren after his prized possession, a 1997 Subaru Sambar, was stolen during the heavy California rain storms last month.

Lucky for Ahgren, his fans lunged at the opportunity to help. Within a day of sounding the alarm, a Redditor and longtime fan found the mini-truck in the parking lot of a massage parlor in Los Angeles, and even returned it to the influencer.

The fan, 19-year-old Christian Mejia who goes by the Reddit handle u/suufferPNG, told Insider the experience was thrilling and somewhat scary when he came face-to-face with the alleged thief. He said Ahgren is rewarding him with merchandise and a special bidet (yes, the influencer owns a line of branded bidets) for his troubles.

Here's what happened to Ahgren — and how his fans helped saved the day.

After his car went missing, Ahgren shared a 'cry for help' video

Ahgren, who has over 4 million YouTube subscribers, posted a "cry for help" video about the missing vehicle on February 28. In the video, which has been viewed over 1.6 million times, he said his 1997 Subaru Sambar was imported from Japan and had been his dream car.

He said that due to the recent torrent of rain in California, the power went out at the warehouse where the car was being stored. After they opened a gate to let one of their crew members leave the warehouse, they couldn't close the gate again.

"The gate stayed open, and through this rain storm, a thief in the night came to our warehouse, went into my car, somehow jacked it … and disappeared from the crime scene," he claimed.

"If you happen to be in LA and you see this 1997 Subaru Sambar, you let me know," he urged viewers.

Ahgren's post quickly went viral, and fans on Reddit started working together to help locate the car. One user seemed to have narrowed the search by posting a video of what looked like the influencer's car in Sylmar, a neighborhood in the north side of Los Angeles. In a follow-up video, Ahgren said his assistant Nick Yingling went to the scene, but the car had already been moved.

Later that day, Yingling returned to the location, this time with Anthony "Slime" Bruno, a member of their group podcast "The Yard." While they found the car, they also discovered a person in it, Ahgren said in the follow-up video. Bruno shared a video of the confrontation online, showing them pressuring the man in the car to return it, but the person fled with the Subaru.

The next day, on March 1, Mejia spotted the car in front of a massage parlor and shared his discovery in a Reddit post, which happened to be down the street from where he lived.

The fan was vigilently 'on the lookout' for the car and his efforts paid off 

"I decided that I'd be on the lookout," he told Insider in a DM on Reddit. "Since there's also an auto body shop nearby [I thought]  maybe they could have taken it there to strip it."

He said he saw the vehicle directly across the street from where it had last been seen. 

The fan said he encountered a man loading bags into the mini-truck and struck up a conversation, but he did not mention Ahgren or press him on whether it was his vehicle.

According to Mejia, the man told him that he wasn't a thief and had possession of the car because he'd struck a deal with someone who owed him money, and who presumably had possession of the car before him. Mejia then decided to involve law enforcement.

"I didn't feel safe being so close to him so I just went into the donut shop in the plaza where I'm safe inside but can still see the truck," he recalled. "I called the police from in there."

Mejia stayed close to the scene as the police arrived, he said. He claimed police did not detain the man because there was no evidence he'd been inside the truck. Insider has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department.

"The overall experience was exciting to find but was scary when encountering the man who allegedly stole it," Mejia said. "In the end, I felt overall lucky that I found it."

The teen told Insider Yingling came to retrieve the car with a tow truck.

When Ahgren was finally reunited with his car, he posted a video thanking the "community effort of ludbuds," a nickname for his fans, along with his friends and teammates who helped out, like Yingling and Bruno. He shared Mejia's story and credited him with saving his beloved vehicle.

"Casual day in the life of Suffer, man," Ahgren said with a joke in reference to Mejia's Reddit name. "What a GOAT."