Perry Co. couple relieved after stolen car, prosthetic arm found

HAZARD, Ky. (WYMT) - It was a scary situation for Sondra Combs and her husband, Perry County Magistrate Ronald Combs, when their car was stolen from a parking lot in Lexington.

Combs said she was with her husband, her son, his girlfriend and a friend when they left a restaurant and found their car was gone.

“We walked outside and I looked at the parking lot, and I looked at everybody and said, ‘Where is my car.’ And then assumed that it had been stolen,” she said.

The family was devastated after the car was taken, but Combs said something inside the car would be hard to replace, Ronald’s prosthetic arm.

“I actually cried because the car is replaceable, I don’t know if we would ever be able to replace his arm, if that was stolen. $100,000 is hard to come up with,” she explained.

She said she did not know what to do.

“‘Oh my gosh, we know our car is going to be destroyed, we know that we’ll never find the arm.’ And we were talking about putting up a reward out for the arm because nobody else can even use it because it’s customized to fit his arm,” Combs explained.

However, once they started making calls, they found something in the car they could track.

“We had called our friends here, I had called Hazard City Police, I called Happy, the mayor, we had told him about what had happened and on the way home, we had talked about how we had Sirius XM radio,” she said.

Officials with the Lexington Police Department were able to track down the car using the radio, finding it just down the street from where it was stolen.

“It is not wrecked, it is not destroyed and when he called us he said, ‘We found the car and from what it looks like, the arm’s in the backseat.’ It actually puts chill bumps down my arm because that’s phenomenal,” she explained.

Combs said only a few dollars and some personal items were stolen.

She thanked the Lexington Police Department for their swiftness in the investigation to find the car.

The entire ordeal lasted around 16 hours. Combs said they still do not know who committed the crime.

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