‘No good deed goes unpunished’: California senior ticketed for truck donated six years ago
By Kurtis Ming
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ELK GROVE, California (KOVR) — We’ve reported before on agencies using old Department of Motor Vehicle records and ticketing the wrong person. One was issued in Salinas, a place Emily Blake-Kessel said she’s never been, six years after she donated the truck involved.
“It angers me!” Emily said.
She donated her Chevy 1500 truck to the Sacramento Children’s Home back in 2015.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Emily said.
Six years later, the City of Salinas sent Emily a letter saying she owed $77.00 for a June 2021 parking ticket citing the truck for having no license plates.
“This ticket was issued in Salinas, California, and I’ve never been there,” she said.
Emily said she removed the plates before donating the truck and filled out a Release of Liability form with the DMV. But she said Salinas wouldn’t drop the ticket.
“They said I was past the grace period for which I never received the initial ticket to give me the grace period,” she said.
If Emily didn’t pay the ticket, the city threatened to take her tax refund.
We’ve learned the charity used an auction company that sold the truck in 2015 to someone with a Mexico address. The DMV said that person never registered the truck, so Salinas sent the ticket to Emily, the last registered owner.
“I’m just flabbergasted,” she said.
After we got involved, the City of Salinas dropped the ticket.
The Sacramento Children’s Home said it works with a car donation processor, which handles car sales on their behalf, so they didn’t have direct knowledge of what happened.
The City of Salinas said they used the most current information available from the DMV.
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