It was in the middle of the night last July when the law finally caught up with Sonya Alexander. Stumbled across her, is more like it.

Her plan was to drive the rental car straight through from New York City and back to L.A., make her peace with the rental agency and get on with her life.

She made it as far as Limon on Colorado's eastern plains before drowsiness forced her into an Interstate 70 truck stop for a nap.

She remembers the rap on the driver's window and the officer's flashlight beam awaking her.

"Do you know that this car is stolen?" the officer asked, after Sonya Alexander collected herself and rolled down the window of the Chrysler PT Cruiser.

"That was the beginning of my nightmare," she said from a friend's home in Limon, which until a week ago she had not left in the nearly eight months since that July 31 night in the truck stop parking lot.

"Ah, yes, Sonya . . . " the jailers at the Lincoln County Jail say, rather dismissively I thought, before waving it off with a chuckle, when I called to ask about her case. They would say nothing more.

Even by her own account, Sonya Alexander, 39, a struggling freelance writer and filmmaker, was less than a model prisoner during the whopping 5 1/2 months she was incarcerated in Lincoln County, unable to raise the initial $30,000 bond - or even the $2,500 a compassionate judge later reduced it to.

She was not, she agreed, a happy camper in jail.

And she never stole the car, she swore, over and over. How could something that started out as a simple trip from Los Angeles to a screenwriting job in the Big Apple, she asks, turn out so awful?

"I feel like it is slavery times and I was caught in the wrong place with the wrong papers."

Only later does she acknowledge that she did have the car for two months.

Wait a minute.

You said initially you rented the car for only one week, she is reminded.

"Let me explain," Sonya Alexander said.

The only reason she went to Rent 4 Less, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based company, was because they would rent her a car for a $9.99 a day.

"It was so inexpensive," she said, "almost unbelievably so."

She handed them her debit card. She received the keys. She set out.

Sonya Alexander was somewhere in the Midwest when she discovered the company had actually taken from her account the more than $700 she had signed for as a deposit. She said Rent 4 Less had promised to not actually send that amount through her bank.

Angry exchanges occurred over the phone. Sonya Alexander also complained to the Better Business Bureau. And she filed a fraud complaint with her bank.

Once in New York, she decided to accept an offer of additional work. Certainly she'd already paid for the additional time on the rental, she reasoned.

What she didn't know was that the car agency had reported the Chrysler stolen.

A woman she met during her five-plus months in jail took her in after an uncle finally posted her bail on Jan. 15.

Prosecutors early on offered her a plea deal: a year and three months probation on the aggravated motor vehicle theft charges, both felonies.

"I told them no," Sonya Alexander said. "I hadn't done anything!"

She stayed in jail.

Kathleen Walsh, spokeswoman for the 18th Judicial District, which includes Lincoln County, did not respond to my request for comment.

A Rent 4 Less spokeswoman declined to comment on Sonya Alexander's case.

Her next court appearance is scheduled for April 6 before District Court Judge Douglas Tallman.

So where is the rental car?

Officers impounded it. The rental car agency has since had it transported back to California.

"To top everything off, I finally got out of jail and discovered all of my belongings that were in the car also were shipped back - my passport, discs containing my writing, my clothing," Sonya Alexander said. "I've lost virtually everything I own in life."

The worst thing, she said, is she has learned from the court that the rental agency now wants $11,000 from her as restitution.

"They were shady from the beginning," Sonya Alexander charged. "But I was in such a rush then. I should have followed my judgment. Now they want to see me work off (the $11,000) in prison.

"I guess it is funny when you say it like that, but it is also so scary at the same time."

For the past week, she has been visiting a friend in Brooklyn.

I asked if she had rented a car to get there.

"No, no, no!" Sonya Alexander said. "A friend who is with the airlines got me a ticket.

"I am not too smart, but I am not that stupid, either."

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763

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