Having their car stolen in San Francisco turned out to be just the start of the wild ride for out-of-towners Patrick McDonald and Linda Rogers.

It started back in mid-August, when the couple - he's from San Jose and she's from Auburn (Placer County) - stepped out of Mel's Diner on Van Ness Avenue to find their 2004 Toyota 4Runner was gone, along with thousands of dollars worth of bikes and other gear they were using in triathlon training.

A couple of weeks later, police found the SUV parked on a city street - but because McDonald and Rogers couldn't make the 15-minute deadline to pick it up, the cops had it towed to a storage yard.

After shelling out $380 for the towing, storage and processing, the couple found that their bikes and other equipment were gone. In their place were 20 empty purses, backpacks, credit cards, drug paraphernalia, burglary tools and DVDs on how to pick locks - plus the Canadian immigration ID card of the woman who may have stolen the car, and phone numbers for her relatives.

McDonald and Rogers phoned police, only to be told that the cops wouldn't investigate because the evidence was too circumstantial and, "anyway, the D.A. won't prosecute."

So, the couple called us and we phoned Police Chief George Gascón, who promised a swift investigation.

Fast forward to Sept. 23, when police arrested 39-year-old Melissa Small of Canada on suspicion of car theft and possession of stolen property. It turns out she was also wanted in Placer County, and that she was in the country illegally and under orders from immigration to wear a tracking bracelet on her ankle while awaiting deportation.

But here's the real capper.

When police went to arrest her at immigration offices in the federal high-rise at 630 Sansome St., they emptied her purse and discovered a pair of knives, a sharp metal file and a couple of drug syringes. All of which she had gotten past the building's metal detectors.

Gavin going south: It's make it or break it time for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom'sgubernatorial run.

Ex-President Bill Clinton's endorsement and his touch-down in Los Angeles on Monday to help Newsom raise money are seen by many as the mayor's last chance to kick-start a campaign that is lagging in the polls, endorsements and funding.

It doesn't help matters much that DreamWorks titans Steven Spielberg,Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen have announced their own Tinseltown fundraiser for Newsom's rival, state Attorney General JerryBrown.

"It's a huge victory," said campaign strategist Ace Smith, a former consultant to both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Brown who is not affiliated with either gubernatorial hopeful now. "It signals that the Hollywood world has come down on a side."

Plus, Clinton's endorsement hasn't exactly been the game changer that Team Newsom was hoping for. Since the much-ballyhooed announcement, the Newsom campaign has reported only seven major contributions of more than $5,000, for a total of $55,000.

And as unaffiliated political consultant Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House spokesman, said: "The only poll that counts at this stage of the game is who's raising money."

So far, Brown has outraised Newsom, 7 to 1. And now that Brown has opened up his official gubernatorial committee, he'll be able to raise three times as much money per donor.

But before anyone starts counting his guy out, Newsom campaign strategist Garry South is quick to point out that the last big winner he had for governor, Gray Davis, raised only $917,000 in the year leading up to the 1998 primary and quickly burned through most of it.

"We know what happened," South said. "Gray beat the other two Democrats 3 to 1 after having been outspent 6 to 1."

Up in smoke: San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón's news conference Wednesday trumpeting the raids of 36 marijuana grow houses in the Sunset since January got a lot of attention.

But, according to vice Capt. Denis O'Leary, what's equally important is that District Attorney Kamala Harrisactually pressed charges in all but one of the 45 grow-house cases that his unit brought from August 2008 to August 2009.

Then again, police say, few if any of the defendants in the roughly 20 percent of the cases resolved so far have gone to prison. Most were released on probation.

Maybe so, says D.A. spokeswoman Erica Derryck, but those were largely straightforward "possession and cultivation" cases - not ones involving more serious charges such as weapons possession.

"The remaining more serious cases are still being prosecuted by this office, which believes strongly in stopping illegal marijuana grows," she said.

EXTRA! Catch our blog at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.