I remember wishing Jimmy and the kids would all just disappear ... so I could finally get my hands on the one thing I'd been craving all day. A glass (or bottle) of chilled white wine.

This isn't the 1980s, when there was a spate of thefts of VW badges after American hip-hop band the Beastie Boys turned them into a fashion item by wearing them around their necks.

It was a bitterly cold evening on Jan. 19, 1997, when Judy Stegle and her husband, Mike, received the call that would upend their lives forever.