CHATTANOOGA, TN – Whit Altizer and his wife, Lindsay, owners of the city’s new Korean taco food truck Taco Sherpa, thought their new business was dead before it even started, Whit said Monday.

The couple’s truck was stolen over the weekend.

Although they found the truck relatively quickly, it gave them a scare and a slight setback.

“The ignition was messed up because they hot-wired it, and some of our lights over our serving window were broken,” Altizer said. “It looked like someone played an early April Fool’s joke and/or someone just wanted to see if they could get away with it.”

When Whit went to pick up the truck from Printree, where designers created a graphic “wrap” for the truck, it was gone.

Whit said he called Red Bank police and waited. He and other local food truck owners also got the word out via Facebook, letting people know that there are only a handful of food trucks in Chattanooga, and one was missing.

The Altizers stumbled upon their missing truck while on the way to a birthday party on Signal Mountain at 11 a.m. the same morning.

It had been parallel parked near the Cherokee Hotel near East Frontage Road, Whit said.

Other local food truck owners Nathan Flynt and Christian Siler helped get the word out via social media, Whit said.

“Nate and Christian really did get the word out,” he said. “Nate especially got on the phone with other businesses to post on their page. I can’t believe how quickly word got out. Our friends around the world even reposted our dilemma.”

Some people posted via social media that they saw it on East Frontage Road, and had the Altizers not seen it, Whit said social media would have been a great help and likely would have led them to the lost truck.

Flynt said the reasons he wanted to help are three-fold. Whit and Lindsay are kind people, and he is really excited to try their tacos, so if the truck is gone, so is his lunch, Flynt said.

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