A 79-year-old Villager has been reunited with her Green Bay Packer-themed golf cart after it disappeared from a parking lot.
Elizabeth Michels, of the Village of Country Club Hills, parked the 2015 Yamaha golf cart on Oct. 18 not far from the golf cart bridge in the parking lot behind Ruby Tuesday at Spanish Springs. She climbed into a friend’s car and they went to lunch outside The Villages.
When they returned, the friend asked Michels if she could drop her off in the Panera parking lot.
“I told her I didn’t mind and I could walk back to my golf cart,” Michels said.
That’s when she discovered her bright yellow golf cart – her sole means of transportation – had disappeared. She contacted Lady Lake police, who searched the area but came up empty. An officer gave Michels a ride home.
The next day, Lady Lake police got a call from 24 Hour Cart Club in Fruitland Park. One of the drivers had been instructed to pick up a Green Bay Packer-themed golf cart in The Villages.
He picked up the wrong cart.
The error was discovered when 24 Hour Cart Club received a call from Southern Cart Works, also in Fruitland Park, letting them know the wrong golf cart had been delivered to the shop. Police used a serial number to confirm the cart at the shop was Michels’ golf cart.
It has since been returned.
Michels was thrilled to have it back, having feared the worst – that it had wound up in a chop shop.
But there is another story here. Michels hails from Peru, Ill. a part of North Central Illinois that is without question Chicago Bears territory.
She’s really a Bears fan.
Her children, who Michels says are likely future Villagers, converted to the Packer religion and insisted that their mother get a Green Bay cart when she moved three years ago to Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.
