Darilyn Gaucher and her teenage daughter walked out of their Martindale home on Sunday afternoon to find the contents of their car on the ground.

Items from the trunk littered the alleyway behind their home, and the driver’s side window had been smashed. Besides a container of windshield washer fluid and a pair of sunglasses, it initially appeared as though nothing was missing.

“She went to the driver’s side and saw the window was smashed in, and I just jokingly said: ‘Yeah, you need to come look at this side of the car,'” Gaucher said.

The front passenger-side door of their 2007 Toyota Yaris had been completely removed from the car and was nowhere to be found.

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“I didn’t even really know what to think,” Gaucher said. “Everyone is just shocked. Who takes just a door?”

Calgary police agree this kind of a theft is unusual in the city.

“More common for us is the car door is perhaps taken in relation to a salvage yard or some kind of industrial setting,” Staff Sgt. Graeme Smiley said. “But certainly it’s unusual, being taken off a vehicle in a residential setting.”

Police also say it’s difficult to find suspects, as they heavily rely on witness information to investigate these kinds of thefts. There’s no word whether there are any suspects in this case.

As bizarre as it may be, the theft places a significant financial strain on Gaucher.

The vehicle was a write-off due to the damage from a hail storm a few years back. Gaucher had planned to give the car to her teenage daughter, who is getting her licence in a few months.

“Every repair — the window, the door, the fender — everything is going to be out of my pocket,” Gaucher said.

READ MORE: RCMP arrest man after string of vehicle thefts in Cochrane and Calgary

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The single mother of three works a full-time job and two part-time jobs to make ends meet. Although her kids are safe and nobody was hurt in the ordeal, she feels her family’s privacy has been violated.

“It’s infuriating to me that people think that they can come and take somebody else’s stuff,” Gaucher said. “I know people have it hard; I know other people struggle. I don’t think my case is special to anybody else’s, but it’s just sad to me.”

Gaucher is now searching salvage yards across the city to find a new car door, which is what she wished the thieves would’ve done instead.