Kathleen Warner doesn’t take car break-ins lying down.

Instead, the undie-clad DIY sleuth climbs into her vehicle at 1.30am and, while sitting on the shattered remains of a window, hunts around the sleepy neighbourhood looking for leads.

She never expected the culprit to be caught nearby while trying on her clothes.

Warner, an essential worker involved in aged care, was in Napier on September 15 to help her mother pack up and move to join her in Taupō.

When her mother, sensitive to things that go bump in the night having had her own parked car written off in a smash and another vehicle come through the fence, heard something happening outside, Warner went to investigate.

“She’d seen them running down the road and I thought oh well, I’ll jump in my car. I was in my underwear, literally sitting on broken glass trying to hunt around,” Warner, 43, told Stuff.

“I saw about five cops ... but there’s always cops everywhere. I did a block tour and saw another officer and I said to him, ‘Look, someone’s just ripped my car off’, and he said, go home and ring 105.”

Officers turned up before she’d got through. A handler and police dog caught the offender’s scent and, within the hour, had retrieved her handbag, wallet and a suitcase with clothes and a pair of shoes she had just bought.

“They said, we’ve actually found them just around the corner.”

The woman was trying the clothes on.

“The police had a photo of my bag hanging up in her house, like I lived there. It looked like she had a pretty good clothes collection just from breaking into cars … She lived down a back section, but the dog took them straight to her door.”

The woman was well-known to police, Warner said.

“I am actually not angry with her. It’s just opportunistic and I understand drug addiction. It’s so bad, the desperation.

“But,” she said, laughing, “at the time I was thinking the next day I will drive around. It won't take me long to find my shoes, find someone wearing my clothes.”

While the incident has come with hassles and days off taken up in making insurance claims and getting her car window repaired, Warner saw the lighter side and is grateful for the rapid police response.

“It was just a hilarious set of events, but I am just so glad I got my stuff back.”

Warner said she’d learnt a lesson about vehicle security.

“Who leaves their handbag in their car? Someone who’s exhausted, just finished work, had to drive to a different town, has had a few gins.”

It may be a point she passes on to her grandson while she’s minding him after school.

“He has told me he now wants to be a police officer when he grows up, so he can get old lady’s bags back when they are stolen!”

Credit:Stuff.co.nz