one afternoon my friend Miranda and I were driving around Los Angeles what were we doing that day I was getting my shoes fixed and I was with you Like a good friend who's willing to do errands as a way to hang out. It was the kind of day where everything felt fun and a little charged, even shoe repair. And then we stopped. At a red light. Right. And how long do you remember that red light being? I, you know, I want to say like maybe 12 to 15 minutes.
In my experience of that light, we're still there. That's how long it was. Yes. It was the kind of thing where you realized it was long, you commented on it, forgot about it, and then... hours later we're like oh my god you know what I just realized we're still at that light right right and and here's the thing like when you're stuck at a light you're kind of just looking for anything to read and look at
We were just very willing to jump down any rabbit hole we could find. And there one was right in front of us. We saw a license plate that said, I love 9-11. Yes, we did. That's exactly what we saw. To be technical, we saw a license plate with the letter I, followed by the letters LUV, and then followed by the numbers 9 and 1 and 1. I love 9-11. And we were looking at the cars all around us and the people and like, is anyone seeing this? How can this be right here in broad daylight?
The plate was attached to an old Buick wagon, half beige, half a sort of orangey tan. Colors that cars don't come in anymore. We couldn't stop talking about it. We would try and move on to a new topic of discussion, but we just kept coming back to the plate. What could it mean? The most obvious explanation that the driver was a terrorist didn't even make sense since the last thing a terrorist would do is get a license plate that said, I'm a terrorist. We had the distinct impression.
that the driver was trying to communicate something powerful to us. I mean, just think about the steps involved in getting a vanity plate that says, I love 9-11. Standing in line at the DMV to get the wrong form. Standing in line at the DMV to get the right form. Standing in line at the DMV to turn in that form. The person would have had so many opportunities to reconsider. And yet, they powered through.
determined to declare their love to a world that couldn't possibly relate. We didn't know if we'd ever understand that love, but we felt a need to at least decipher it. When the light finally turned green, at a point so far into the future that everything that's in fashion now returned to fashion again, until the world seemed exactly the same. We got into the left-hand lane.
We were now directly alongside the Buick. The driver was an elderly woman. In my memory, she was wearing the kind of hat you might wear to church. The idea of not finding out the answer felt crazy. I wanted to get out of the car, make the universal gesture of roll down your window and tell me what your inscrutable vanity plate means. Instead, we turned left, and the woman and the answer went straight. Back then...
I didn't think there was anything else I could do about it. But now, I do. From Gimlet, I'm Starly Kine, and this is Mystery Show. Every week, I solve a new mystery. Mysteries that can't be solved online. Mysteries that can't be solved yourself. Unless you're me. Because this week on Mystery Show, the mystery is mine. Curveball. I know. I don't even know what I don't even know those mysteries. So you've got your work cut out for you. I've got a lot of work. Oh my gosh.
I don't know how you're going to find her. What I'm picturing is you're going to go back to that light and she's going to still be there. Well, it was a very long light. Yeah. So what's going to happen is I'm going to run the plates. Oh, great. I'm going to investigate all the leads.
Then I'm going to give you a report. I love that. And I, for my part, will just wait. So my first task was to head to a police station to ask a cop if he could run a complete stranger's license plate and give me her personal contact info.
Once inside the station, I met a police sergeant who wasn't allowed to talk to me on tape, but who was permitted to just shoot the breeze with me for a while. He told me how much he was looking forward to retiring three years from now. He planned on moving to the country.
so that his daughter could grow up riding horses and he and his son could sit around all day playing guitar. I asked him if he could run a license plate number for me. He said he could have if the plate was right in front of him where he could see it. or if he had an official reason to do so. I had a feeling that didn't include because I just really want to know. I wish the sergeant good luck on his future life and left to pursue other options.
Hi. How are you? This is Darren. He's an investigative journalist. I thought he might have some advice for me about how to get a cop to run a plate. He said it wasn't a matter of asking the right way. It was a matter of asking the right cop. He knew one who owed him a favor. Okay. had a valid registration was from August 2010 to August 2011. That matches up with my timeline of when I last saw it. But the problem is, because it's not registered, we can't get a name on it.
Really? That's how that works? Yeah. I asked him if he could see who he was previously registered to and he said he couldn't get that information. Right now it's a bit of a dead end. Did it show when the license plate was first got? Is there any record of that? I don't see that here. No. It doesn't say anything about... Well, it does say... I'm just noticing this now. It does say November 18, 2008, previous license.
And there's another number here from the previous slide. I wonder if you've run that number. Yeah. Well, let's find out. Okay. You've got to be curious now. I'm going to see. I'm going to follow up on the previous slide. Darren told me he'd have to go through a cycle of non-favor-related phone calls to his guy before he'd be able to hit him up about the second plate. I understood and told him I'd wait for him to get in touch.
There's something that might have already occurred to you that never once occurred to Miranda and me while we were stuck at the light that day. What if we were reading the license plate, I love 9-11. I'll rock. Let's consider some alternate theories. Perhaps her favorite Bible passage was, Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion. Declare among the people his doings. Psalm 911.
Or maybe it was simply a matter of improper punctuation. We were inserting a forward slash, 9-11, where there should have been a period, 91.1. Corporate control is not an issue at 91X. More local, independent radio. So, it could be 91X in San Diego? This is one of my investigators, Eric. Which, as implied by the X, like all X stations across America, it's like an alt rock station. And it's not because I love... 91.1 FM in San Diego. But I think my brother would.
The X station where I'm from in Tampa Bay is 97X, and my brother has this really lucky streak of winning all of their on-air competitions. We tallied it up at Thanksgiving last year, and he's won like... Something like $7,000 worth of gifts and trips and stuff from the caller number 97. Really?
I think they know him. He's on their Facebook page. So he won a trip to New Orleans. He wins concert tickets. Backstage passes all the time. So I think my brother, actually, my brother is the kind of person who would get I love. This would be 97, I think it's 971. Yeah. I love 971 in Tampa Bay. I'm going purely on gut here. Okay. Even so, Eric still only gave it a 20% chance.
91X was broadcast out of San Diego, which he worried was too far away from L.A. Do they have contests? Yeah, I'm sure they do. What's playing now? If I were to pull it back up. It is. Including a trip to Mammoth. And to see all day in New York City still chances. So if I were you, I'd go to 91x.com and check that fancy seat sheet. As we roll through 91 minutes nonstop. That was a contest. That was a contest.
I don't know. I feel like you're going to have to pump that percentage up a little bit. Okay, fine. I don't know. 20% is a lot for someone who doesn't live in San Diego. Like, ooh, I love Daft Punk. And do you think there's a difference in the quality of love, L-O-V-E, versus L-U-V? At one point in my life, I would have said no. You mean like when you were like a teenager, LUV meant? Yeah, it's like all you know is LUV, therefore it is LOV, right?
And then as you get older, I think there's like a more distinct separation between the two. That's sad too, isn't it? Like, you're just like, like, for yourself? Yeah, I was like, probably it was nice to just LUV something. There wasn't so much weight attached to it, like the weight of a moving vehicle.
But what seemed more likely than a psalm, more likely even than a radio station that was barely affiliated to the radio station where Eric's brother kept winning contests, was that the numbers 911 meant 911. Everyone I knew seemed to think so. First, I would tell them about the plate, pronouncing it as I love 9-11, and they'd be shocked. Then I'd bring up the possibility of it being I love 9-1-1, and they'd say, oh yeah.
That's probably what it is. Now, in hindsight, I think it could be that she works for either just the police or they work specifically for 911. They're like an operator. Or 911 saved her life or the life of her child. And so, yeah, she loves them. I didn't know when the woman had gotten the plate. I did know that Miranda and I had seen it 10 years after the event that forever made the plate very easy to misconstrue. Whatever it was that this woman loved.
She had to love it enough to be okay with that. Would a 911 operator really feel that way? I started in 1970. Oh, wow. 74. This is Carol. So you were like one of the first of what we know as 911 operators. Detroit was one of the first big cities that had it. When 911 began, the idea of just one number that would service all your emergencies was such a novel concept that a typical call would go like this. A person would dial 911. The dispatcher would answer. The caller would say,
Oh, it works. And then hang up. Eventually, people figured out the system. And then they just started calling in for everything. There was one situation. I just picked up the phone and this person said, there's a German Shepherd dog driving a car. And he gave me the description of the car and the location. And I hung up and it's like...
how do I say this without sounding like a complete lunatic, you know? But I didn't have much choice. So I gave it out. And within like two or three minutes, an officer comes on the air and he says, yeah, you're right. I'm behind his car, and there's a dog sitting in the driver's seat, and he had his paws up on the steering wheel, and he was aiming the car. What? Yeah. And so he pulled it over, and the guy had...
taught the dog how to steer, and he was sitting on a passenger seat working the pedals, you know, the brake and the gas. And apparently the dog did pretty good as far as steering. Okay, I have a lot of questions. If you teach your dog how to drive, is that illegal? Well, we kind of had joked around about who was going to get the ticket, but the guy got the ticket. They cited him for allowing an unlicensed operator to drive the vehicle. Wait a minute.
If the dog got licensed, would it then be legal? Probably. This is probably not the lesson I'm supposed to be learning from this, but I want to teach my dog to drive me as soon as I get off the phone call. Okay. Well, don't do it in a busy road. That's all I have to say. Carol tells me she would sometimes be the only dispatcher working and would have to figure out how to juggle the different calls coming in, the most urgent ones.
were labeled hot calls. She remembers one night getting three hot calls all at once. There had been a traffic accident with injuries. Three guys in ski masks were hanging around outside a convenience store. and a man was drowning his wife in their swimming pool. And then... In the middle of this, a lady calls to report that there's a dead squirrel in her yard, and it's like, you know, okay, this is really low on my priority list at the moment.
Does your mind now prioritize things a certain way because of all the years spent doing that naturally for emergencies? I think so. I think you look for ways to fix things. more self-sufficient than some people are always trying to turn to somebody else to fix their problem. Having a job where people call you for help has taught you to be more self-sufficient and ask for help less.
Yeah. Does that sound backwards? Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, counterintuitive. I would think that lesson would be, oh, it's good to ask for help. Well, it is good to ask for help. I guess I just heard so much of what happens to people. good and bad, but I think it just helps you put into perspective what is really something that's important and urgent and what's just life and you just deal with it as it comes. There are some calls that linger forever.
It snows a lot in Michigan, if you didn't know. And so it was wintertime and it was snowing and this woman was driving to work and she lost control of her car and hit a snowplow head on and was killed. She happened to be my age. She had young children. And it's like, you know, that just took on a personal tone. And it's just a call I've never forgotten.
I got all this information because I looked at the police report that came in after and saw the details. And I wish I hadn't. At that point, I learned I probably didn't want to read most of the police reports because I didn't want to know that much about what happened. The story I'm working on is about a license plate that I saw that said,
LUV, and the number's 911. Uh-huh. I just have been trying to figure out what it is, and so do you think it's possible to love 911? I do. My guess would be it's someone who works for it. Really? That would put that. Yeah. Why? My license plate was 10-9, and that was the police code for repeat your message. That was your license plate? Really? Yeah. That was a personalized license plate.
When we saw those police radio codes on people's license plates, we generally meant that they worked for an agency. So you see other license plates that have police codes, radio codes, or 911 references in them? Yeah. It's not uncommon. So you love 911? Yes, I would say I do. I mean, you know, you really and truly can help people. You know, most days you go to work and it's just a job. I'll be real honest. It is. It's just a job. But, you know, every once in a while you get that call.
get the police and the fire there in time to save somebody. It's exciting. You're definitely nudging it pretty firmly over that it's a 911 license plate argument. That's what I would think if I saw it, yes. I think they're proud of it. I love 9-1-1 had just edged ahead as the most convincing theory. One I felt compelled to believe. Unless I found the Buick's driver and she told me otherwise. I have some information for you. Here's Darren again. Uh-huh.
the new license plate, the other license plate to my friend. And while I'm waiting for him to get back to me because he wasn't at the computer at the time, while I'm waiting for him to get back to me, I'm sitting in my office and all of a sudden I hear a crack outside and I look out my window.
And some guy has sideswiped my car and knocked the side view mirror off. Really? Yeah. He takes off. And I go chasing the guy down the block like a lunatic in my slippers. And he gets away. He blows through the light. But the guy has a vanity plate.
So my friend comes back to me with the answer to your plate, and then I had to write him back and say, actually, do you have time to run one more? It turns out the guy lives down the block to me. I just drove by it this morning. And it was there, the car?
And the car was there. So I have to go back. I have to go back. It was after a run. I was all sweaty. I didn't want to show up looking like an animal. Right. You know. Take a shower and then I'll go back. Is his vanity play easier to understand than I Love 9-11? Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's like, I love sideswiping reverie mirrors. Exactly. It was...
I wreck cars. But yeah, in the course of like a couple of weeks, I've run a bunch of license plates. I've only done it once before in my entire life. And now I feel like I'm running license plates all the time. So you want to know about your license plate? Yeah. Okay. So I got a name. Really? Yeah. Wow. I'll tell you the name and you can bleep whatever you need to bleep. So the name is... Now the bummer is...
There's an address here, but the bummer is that it's a PO box. Oh. This person doesn't want to be found. No kidding. This person is so the opposite of the person who side-wiped you. I know. If only that person was the person I was looking for, the case would be closed really easily. Just walk down the block. Just walk down the block.
Okay, but we have a P.O. box, I can send a letter, and we have a name. The only thing now is that there's a lot of pressure on you to write a letter that they're going to respond to. And I could tell how much this means to you, and I would say just don't overthink it. Okay.
I always overthink it. And it takes me, as you know, my last letter, I wrote the letter over and over again for like two months before I sent it. And then in the end, I would just like reply back like, yeah, let's talk. So don't overthink it. Don't overthink it. I write a letter and mail it to the P.O. Box address, feeling like I was right back where I started. Once again, waiting. Want to know what that felt like? Here's your chance, during this short break.
I thought that the hard part of solving what I love 9-11 meant would be finding out the driver's identity. Once I had that, I assumed that everything that followed would be as easy as teaching a dog to drive a car. But incredibly, the driver... let's call her Margaret, was becoming more of a mystery to me with every attempt I made to reach out to her. I waited weeks for a response to the letter I sent, but never heard back. I searched public records for every possible combination of her name.
and then called every number that came up. No one ever answered. Each number had some version of anonymous outgoing message. This was a woman who put such a personal message on her license plate, but who couldn't leave a simple, hi. I'm not in right now, on her voicemail. I would have just knocked on her front door, but I couldn't find another address for her beyond the P.O. box. But then finally, another one of my investigators, Melinda, made a discovery. I just...
like, did a cross-reference thing that excited me, where I figured out married name, I think. Searching under this new name, Melinda had then found a house address that had the same phone number listed as the P.O. Box. We now knew where Margaret lived, or at least had once lived. I did a search to see if she was still getting utilities billed there. So, you did? What?
Even if Margaret wasn't living at this address anymore, it was still the best lead I had. We're getting close. This is our exit. I know, six minutes. Whoa. Being as how it was my first stakeout and all, I wanted to do it right. Stale coffee. Check. Red vines? Check. Stakeout partner? Check. Is it this block? It's coming. It looks like it looks right here. Okay, next block. This is my friend Matt. His main stakeout partner qualifications are that his schedule is flexible.
and that he's prone to grumbling. I think we should call and complain, because that was ridiculous. Imagine rush hour? Forget it. He'd be there for an hour. It's after 8 when Matt and I arrive at Margaret's neighborhood. As we turn onto her street... It dawns on me that, okay, maybe I hadn't taken everything into account. Like, that at nighttime, it's dark. Do we see anything? I don't know. I can't even see any numbers. After much squinting...
and significantly more grumbling. We figure out which house is hers. Look, that's it. This one? This! Wow, this just got really real. If an anonymous voicemail message were a house, it would look like Margaret's. There's like no lights, no car in the driveway. There was also no sign of the car on the street. My plan had been to use the car as an entry point into a conversation with Margaret.
Without the car in sight, though, I didn't know what the next step was. And Matt and I couldn't stake out the house, since all the good stakeout spots had been taken. If there was a spot right in front of the house, then we'd be on Easy Street. But we weren't on Easy Street. We were on Hard Street, at the intersection of frustrating and questionable. But wait. Was that a glint of metal I saw? Yeah, there's a car back there. I'm going to make a U-turn.
I don't know why we were whispering. The windows were closed. All right, I'm going to watch what I'm going to do. Matt and I pull into the driveway as though we're making a U-turn. There's a low gate, and our headlights shine through it, illuminating the back of the driveway. And then from behind the house, with just its nose poking out, we see. Oh, is that it? Do you see it? Yeah, it's it. Matt, it's the car. It's the car. It's the car. It's definitely the car. Oh my god, we found it.
Now are you feeling disappointed? No. Wow. This is a great success. We pull back into the street. The car is swallowed up by the darkness once more. Having confirmed that I had the right house, I set out the next day on my own. I pull up outside Margaret's. Of course, now that I wasn't on a stakeout, there's plenty of choice stakeout spots available. Typical. I open the gate. and walk up to the front door. I take a deep breath and knock. No answer. I knock again. No answer. I knock again.
A slight shifting of the curtains, followed by a voice. Who is it? Here was a detail I hadn't thought through beforehand. Starly, I say. Who? Um, do you have a license plate that says, I love, I pause again. The numbers nine and one and one. Oh, that's my manager in Margaret's car, says the voice.
I'm Sheila. Margaret lives in the house and back. I think she's home now. Just go and knock on her door. I thanked Sheila and stepped away from the door, relieved by how smoothly this was all going. Wait a minute, said Sheila. When did you see the car? Here we go, I thought. I would have to explain the whole story. The running of the plates, the calling in of favors, how it was the dog's owner and not the dog itself who controlled the brakes and gas while driving. A few years ago?
Oh, that makes sense, says Sheila. The car hasn't been driven since about then. And with that, the curtain fell back into place. I had left my recording equipment in the car and also my phone in order to feel out the situation. When I went to open the gate to go get it, Sheila called out like a video game wizard and said I was going the wrong way. So I let go of the gate latch and walked down the driveway.
to Margaret's house in the back. Between me and her front door was the car. Its colors were a little more faded than I remembered, but otherwise it was the same. There was a little plush stuffed animal dog perched on the back seat. I circled around until I was standing behind the trunk and looked at the license plate. It was the same, too. I love 9-11.
I went up Margaret's steps so that I was standing in front of her door. There were tchotchkes in the windows, a sculpture of a little boy riding a scooter, and another one of a woman dancing. Wind chimes twisted in the breeze. There was no doorbell. so I knocked on the metal gate. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. Next door, the neighbor's dog barked. From the main house, I heard Sheila call out, She's not in there? Thought for sure she was. You'll have to come back another day then.
On my next visit, I wanted to bring Margaret a gift, proof of my friendly intentions. So I pulled over at the first flower shop I saw. Inside, the store was nearly empty. except for half a dozen orchids. I chose a purple one. The man who worked there seemed so surprised that I was actually buying something that he pulled out all the stops. He offered to transfer it to a nicer vase.
He added moss and tied a big ribbon around it. All the while he talked to me about where he was from, Mexico City, and how much he loved to travel. He said, though, that he hadn't yet been to the place he most wanted to go. the 911 memorial in New York City. He felt that he really needed to pay tribute to it in person. I pull up to Margaret's house.
Open the gate, walk down the driveway. Wind chimes, tchotchkes. No obvious place to knock. I rap on the metal gate, holding the orchid with my other arm. No response. I knock again. No response. Next door, the neighbor's dog is losing his mind. I put the flowers down on the stoop. Then I knock again. Louder. Longer. From inside, a voice. It's so faint, I have to press my ear against the door in order to hear it. Who is it?
It's Starly. Who? Oh boy. Here goes nothing. Years ago I saw your license plate and it made such an impression on me that I've been wondering about it ever since. Sweetheart, says the voice. My secretary gave me your letter. I've been meaning to call you. I like that she calls me sweetheart. Her voice is so soft.
I can't talk right now though, sweetheart. I just got out of the bath. I'm wearing only a towel. Who was this nice sounding woman with the secretary who gave her letters? What is it that she loved? Sweetheart, after this I have a doctor's appointment. Can you come back another day? What about later tonight? I ask. I'm busy, sweetheart. Tomorrow? Sweetheart, I have church.
I tell her I brought flowers, and that I'll just leave them on her stoop. Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you. It feels like that instead of two doors separating us, there's a hundred. It feels like, even if those two doors were to open right now, she would still be just a voice. A voice somehow wrapped in a towel. I get back in my car and start driving. I'm in such a daze that I keep missing the streets I'm supposed to turn on.
And then, my phone rings. It's a Los Angeles area code. I pull over to a parking lot and pick up. Hello? Sweetheart, it's Margaret. I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to tell you the story behind my plate. Also, thank you for the flowers. They're beautiful.
Here's where I tell you that Margaret and I talked for eight minutes before her ride came to take her to her doctor's appointment. Here's where I tell you that I recorded the conversation on my phone, but when I later played it back, it was eight minutes of silence. Here's where I tell you the story of why Margaret got a license plate that said, I love 9-11. Not Psalms 9-11. Not I love 91.1. Not I love 9-1-1.
In 2001, Margaret was living in New York. Her mother was living in Los Angeles. That year, Margaret had a feeling. She doesn't know how else to put it. No one ever believes her about it, she says. But that's okay. She had a feeling she needed to go to L.A. for her mother's birthday. So she booked a flight. Her mother's birthday was September 11th.
Because she went to see her mother, Margaret wasn't in New York on the day of the attacks. She believes that her life was saved by doing that, saved by her mother's love. She got the license plate shortly after 9-11. to honor her mother's birthday, and also to commemorate the victims who died. I lost a lot of friends that day, she tells me.
She says she knows that when people see her plate, they think it's 911. Especially cops, she says. They always remark about it. She asks me where I saw it, and I tell her which intersection. Oh yes, sweetheart. That's where I used to live. My children went to school over by there. Here's where I tell you that Margaret couldn't have been warmer or more likable. And here's where I tell you that she promised to call me again so that we could do a proper interview. But when she did call,
She said she'd been feeling under the weather and had to reschedule. And then the next time, she said she'd just been so busy trying to get her house ready to sell. We never did do the interview. I updated Miranda on what I had learned. Is the case solved? Yeah, the case is solved. Do you think the case is solved? Deeply, profoundly. Like, like we were right. There was something up with that plate, you know?
More and more, I believe like there is no accuracy in communication. There are only mistakes. It is so hard to communicate like love, you know, or. sadness combined with love like that's a very complex thing and that's what brings us grace like it's not accuracy and She trusted that when she made the plate, that somehow the most confusing contrary message in the world would speak to people's hearts because her intentions behind it were so clear and so strong.
It was effective. I mean, all the things that made our heart beat turned out to be relevant. And I feel like we got her message. Now come the day you walk through that door Finally see what you've always been sure Hope that you find what you're looking for I hope that Let you find what you're looking for Open your eyes
Mystery Show is produced by Alex Bloomberg, Melinda Shopson, Eric Menel, and me. Producing help for this episode from Fia Benin. Eli Horowitz is contributing editor. Engineering help from Josh Rogeson. Thanks also to Matt Lieber. Original score for this episode by White Dove. Closing song by Emmy the Great. Opening song by Sparks. Arthur Jones made our logo with a toaster that now makes so much more sense to you.
And thank you, Jonathan Goldstein, Jorge Just, Sloane Crosley, Laura Craft, and John Ronson. You all helped more than you even realize. Apparently my clue last week was too easy, since tons of you guessed. stop in the name of love. William Hudson was the first one to send me his correct guess. Good job, William. Take the rest of the weekend off. I will obviously need to start making my clues harder, starting possibly with this week's clue. Let's just see how it goes. Could have been the Joker.