A typical stakeout
Koskovics and his men use the mapping software Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005 on Dell laptops to find their repossession locations.
With the help of Microsoft's inexpensive software Streets and Trips Tim Koskovics navigates highways and backcountry with ease and accuracy while searching for vehicles in need of repossesion.
“God be with us here,” Koskovics says as he begins a stakeout trip at 6:30 p.m. on a Monday. “I always let my little honey pie know where I am,” he says as he calls his wife on his cell phone.
Koskovics drives over several backcountry roads to get to his first destination. He passes a road he was supposed to turn on. As he puts the tow truck in reverse, it beeps and red lights on the roof start spinning.
As Koskovics turns into the driveway, a caged dog starts barking frantically. Koskovics doesn’t see the car in question, but the homeowner comes out to see what’s happening. It turns out that the car had been repossessed already by another company.
Koskovics has a harder time finding the second destination because the area isn’t lit well. He thinks the address might be a trailer, so he pulls into the trailer park. He glances at the addresses on the mailboxes and realizes he is wrong. A woman standing outside of a trailer stares at the tow truck with curiosity, and she knocks on the passenger-side window. She asks Koskovics, in a cheeky tone, if he needs any help and helps him get back on the street toward his destination.
When he finally finds the house, Koskovics pulls into a side driveway to see if he can spot a truck in the person’s back yard. He doesn’t see anything, but it could be parked in the closed garage. While Koskovics assesses the area, the people living in the house peek out the back door.
Koskovics decides to approach so they won’t be suspicious. Because the truck’s owner is a contractor, Koskovics tells the man’s son he is looking to hire a contractor for a job. The son gives Koskovics his dad’s business card, and Koskovics leaves without revealing his motives.
The shame game
After Koskovics searches for the truck at the contractor’s house, he does one last stakeout, but this one is a guaranteed steal. He picks up a black Cavalier that has been dropped off at a car dealership with the keys locked in the car. He says he suspects the owner did this out of embarrassment.
All Tim Koskovics needs for the night's repossession is in the envelope. The night begins with the words, "God be with us here."
People can be very humiliated by the fact that their car needs to be repossessed and go to great lengths to prevent others from finding out. Koskovics says he works with people to avoid the embarrassment factor. On one occasion, he worked out an arrangement with a man from Norwalk to park his car in the parking lot of Midway Mall in Elyria, which is about 30 miles away, and Koskovics picked it up there.
It’s not always simple for agents to repossess cars. Some people resort to desperate measures to prevent their vehicles from being repossessed.
Koskovics remembers the most life-threatening situation he ever found himself in when he repossessed a car on the east side of Youngstown in 1987.
The man whose car was being repossessed thought his car was being stolen and became irate. As Koskovics sat in the tow truck, the man fired a shot through his back window. The bullet would have pierced Koskovics in the collarbone, but it hit off of the small metal zipper on his jacket instead, leaving him unharmed. Koskovics recounts this with a stone-cold expression.
“For every one time it happens, it may not happen again for 100 more times,” Koskovics says about the dangerous situations. Koskovics and his men don’t get nervous or paranoid that something could go wrong during repossessions. They try to prevent and control the situations, he says.
After hooking up a Chevy Cavalier to the back of his truck, Tim Koskovics drives away.
Blowers says a few of his men at Skipco have been shot during stakeouts. One of his employees was killed in December 1984. Blowers says the 21-year-old employee, who normally didn’t go on stakeouts without Blowers, decided to go alone on the night he was killed. Because of what happened to his employee, Blowers has never let his 21-year-old son, Keith, go on stakeouts with him.
The people who retaliate when their cars are being repossessed are usually mad about something personal going on in their lives, and the repossession can sometimes be the extra thing that pushes them over the edge, Blowers says.
While using a gun is the most extreme way to ward off the repo man, there are other creative methods people have used to avoid agents. Koskovics says some of his repossession agents have had trunks closed on their heads, with the owners then driving off. Other owners drive their cars right off the tow truck hooks. One Friday night, a Defiance woman drove her car through hedges to get away from the repossession agents.
“I was only a year behind, why did you repossess it?”
Koskovics says some people just don’t get it at all. “I was only a year behind, why did you repossess it?” a woman once asked Koskovics.
He says many repossession agencies have the motto, “We’ll take it no matter what,” but that can put them in sticky situations. “The right way to do business is to show respect to people,” Koskovics says.
Even though people can get violent, Blowers says his repossession agents don’t receive any kind of self-defense training. “We teach them only how fast their feet will move backwards,” Blowers says. “If things are gonna go stupid, get out while the gettin’ is good.”
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