City of Bellingham Hearing Examiner

The City of Bellingham Hearing Examiner conducted a vehicle impound appeal hearing for Erica Irizarris, who challenged both the validity of the impound and the associated towing and storage fees for her 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The vehicle was impounded on February 4th by Bellingham Police Department and towed by Heston Hauling. Irizarris testified that her vehicle broke down unexpectedly around midnight on Northwest Drive due to a blown radiator hose in freezing conditions. After struggling with the overheating vehicle for nearly two hours, she parked it on Horton Road under a streetlight, positioned as far right as possible to avoid obstructing traffic. She walked home (0.9 miles) to get antifreeze and water, intending to return immediately to fix the vehicle and drive it home. When she returned approximately two hours later, the vehicle had been towed. The police statement indicated the vehicle was impounded because it was obstructing a bike lane and protruding into the vehicle travel lane, creating a potential traffic hazard for morning commuters. Heston Hauling provided standard testimony about their authorized towing procedures, rates set by Washington State, and current storage charges. Hearing Examiner Sharon Rice took the matter under advisement and will issue a written decision within 10 business days (by February 26th) determining whether the impound was proper and whether the towing and storage fees should be upheld or waived.

No formal votes were taken as this was an administrative hearing. The Hearing Examiner will issue a written decision within 10 business days (by February 26, 2025) on: - Whether the vehicle impound was legally justified - Whether the towing and storage fees ($600.05 at time of attempted retrieval, now $1,370.68 with accumulated storage) should be upheld or waived Current charges include: - Initial towing and half-day storage: $600.05 - Additional storage (7.5 days as of hearing): $757.50 - Total current charges: $1,370.68

**Erica Irizarris, on her situation:** "I was going at night to do some doordash because I needed to pay my phone bill in a couple of days, and I needed to make the money to pay my phone bill." **Irizarris, on the breakdown:** "All of a sudden, suddenly the radiator hose blew off and there was smoke water, you know everything coming out of the front hood." **Irizarris, on her intent:** "It was an unexpected breakdown but I didn't abandon it. I was going right back." **Irizarris, on the towing timeline:** "I didn't even have 2 hours. Normally, people get, you know, an orange tag, a sticker, something, you know they get some kind of warning." **Chris Heston, on towing authorization:** "Pretty tight and dry. They say, take it, we take it." **Heston, on rate setting:** "All of our rates are set with the State of Washington and filed with the State of Washington under the RTO official fees."

## Meeting Overview On February 11, 2025, Bellingham Hearing Examiner Sharon Rice convened a virtual impound appeal hearing to decide a case that would ultimately turn on competing interpretations of what constitutes proper procedure when a vehicle breaks down in the early morning hours. The hearing, conducted via Zoom, brought together Erica Irizarris, whose 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee had been towed from Horton Road in the early morning hours of February 4, Chris Heston of Heston Hauling towing company, and city staff member Ms. Bowker. What began as a routine vehicle breakdown on a snowy February night had escalated into a $1,370 dispute over whether the city and its contracted towing company had acted properly in removing an allegedly abandoned vehicle. The case presented a stark human dimension that would permeate the entire proceeding: Irizarris, caring for her sick mother while dealing with her own medical challenges including a recent pregnancy loss and health complications, found herself fighting to recover her only means of transportation after what she described as an emergency vehicle breakdown that lasted less than two hours. The hearing would reveal competing narratives about the events of that cold February morning and raise questions about the balance between traffic safety enforcement and consideration for citizens facing unexpected emergencies. ## The Towing Company's Account Chris Heston, owner of Heston Hauling, presented his company's role in straightforward terms that emphasized adherence to established procedures and state-regulated pricing. "Mine, as you've heard before, it goes pretty simple. We go back to the impound invoice," Heston testified, referring to the detailed timeline his company maintained of the towing operation. According to his records, Bellingham Police Department requested their services at 3:04 AM on February 4, 2025. The company dispatched a truck one minute later at 3:05 AM, with the driver arriving on scene at 3:38 AM. The actual towing process, Heston explained, began at 3:43 AM and was completed when the vehicle arrived at the towing yard at 4:08 AM, with all paperwork cleared by 4:20 AM. "For a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes," Heston noted. "Everything was slower that day, as you can see from all the photos. We had a lot of snow, a lot of ice, so everything took time." When it came to the financial aspects of the towing operation, Heston was careful to emphasize that his company's rates were not arbitrary but regulated by state authority. "All of our rates are set with the State of Washington," he testified. "Our rate per hour under our RTTO licensing is $400 per hour. We charge $500 even on that, and then storage per day is... $101 per day. So we charge $50.50, and then tax. So for a total of $600.05." He clarified that this was classified as a "class A tow truck" operation, which he described as "the smallest, lowest rate" category, meaning Irizarris's vehicle was not subject to the higher rates applied to commercial vehicles, buses, or RVs. A significant confusion emerged during Heston's testimony regarding the vehicle's current status. Initially, he stated that "the vehicle was redeemed 2/5/25 at 3:30 PM," using the industry term for when a vehicle is released to its owner. However, when Irizarris interjected that she had never actually retrieved her vehicle, Heston acknowledged his error. "Yeah, and that's my error. So it wasn't. I see where they circled. They attempted to redeem it at 2/5/25 at 3:30... So, yeah, we do still have the vehicle. And charges are actually a lot different right now." The ongoing storage had significantly increased the financial burden. "Currently, I'm showing in our system it's 7 and a half days, which would be a total of $757.50 for the storage itself, and we have a grand total at the moment of $1,370.68," Heston reported. This revelation transformed what had begun as a $600 dispute into a case involving nearly $1,400 in fees that continued to accumulate daily. Regarding the classification of the incident, Heston explained the terminology used in towing operations. When Hearing Examiner Rice asked about the "abandoned vehicle" designation, Heston clarified: "The phrase is used because there's no owner or driver with the vehicle at the time." This was purely procedural language, he emphasized: "It doesn't require anybody's intent to abandon a vehicle. It's just what you call a vehicle when you can't find an owner or a driver." Throughout his testimony, Heston maintained that his company had simply responded to a police request and followed established procedures. "No, your honor, it was just called in by Bellingham PD. Pretty cut and dry. They say take it, we take it," he concluded. "Charges are, like I said, set by the State, and those are the right rates we go by." ## Irizarris's Emergency Breakdown Account Erica Irizarris painted a dramatically different picture of the events, one centered on an unexpected mechanical emergency that left her stranded in freezing conditions while trying to earn money to pay basic bills. Her testimony revealed the precarious circumstances that had led to her being out on the roads in the early morning hours: "I was going to try to work a little bit that night. Do some DoorDash because I needed to pay my phone bill in a couple of days, and I needed to make the money to pay my phone bill." The context of her situation added layers of complexity to what might otherwise seem like a simple traffic violation. "I'm here in Bellingham. I've been taking care of my mom. She's been sick. I almost lost her back in July. And so she needs a lot of care right now," Irizarris explained. "While I've been here, I just... once she's in bed, I try to go work at night sometimes." The mechanical failure occurred suddenly and without warning as Irizarris was navigating Bellingham's icy February streets. "I didn't realize everything was frozen. My car needed antifreeze. So as I was driving, I realized that the Jeep wasn't warming up like usual, and I was getting no heat at all, and it was really cold," she testified. "As I was like on Northwest Drive, getting to the roundabout near the car lot there, the new car lot, I was at the roundabout there. I turned around. I was going to come back home. I was like, 'Oh shoot! I need antifreeze,' and I was going to come back home. And all of a sudden, suddenly the radiator hose blew off and there was smoke, water, you know, everything coming out of the front hood." What followed was a prolonged struggle to get her disabled vehicle to safety. "So I pulled it over right there on Northwest, and tried to put some water in it and clamped the radiator hose back on and attempted to drive back home, and it kept heating up. So I kept pulling over every so often. Just, you know, every few hundred feet, I'd pull over, let it cool down a little more, kept going. Pull over, let it cool down a little more, kept going." During this extended breakdown process, Irizarris noted that law enforcement was already aware of her situation: "There was even like a police car that stopped by and he didn't stop. He just kept going, but really slow, watching, but never stopped." This detail would prove significant in her argument that police could have approached her about the vehicle's placement rather than immediately towing it. When her vehicle finally became undrivable, Irizarris made what she considered a reasonable decision given the circumstances. "When I got to Horton Road, and I turned there, I finally just said, 'I'm going to stop and pull it over here, because it's the safest spot. It was under a lamp post. It was in a well-lit area right across from a park. The street was pretty wide. I tried to get it onto the sidewalk there, put it as much to the right as possible so as not to obstruct any traffic, even though there was no traffic at the time. It was about 2:30, 2:40 in the morning." The timeline becomes crucial to Irizarris's argument. The initial breakdown had occurred around "12:15 or so in the morning," meaning she had already been dealing with the mechanical emergency "for a couple of hours" by the time she finally stopped the vehicle. The decision to walk home was driven by both mechanical necessity and physical distress: "At that point, the car was making a knocking sound, and so that scared me. I was like, 'I don't want to mess up the engine, too.' You know, 'I'm going to stop it right here.' I was 0.9 miles away from home. So I was like, 'I'm going to walk and go home and get some antifreeze' and come right back." The walk home in the harsh February weather became its own ordeal. "I was at that point, I was already freezing. I was freezing my butt off. I had been in the cold for hours, and I just couldn't think. I couldn't feel my hands, my face, anything, you know," Irizarris testified. "I started walking home. I walked home, took me about 30 minutes to get home. It was windy. It was cold... I was crying the first time home. I was wet, you know. I was wearing boots with high heels, a rock in my shoe. It was just really bad." Despite these conditions, Irizarris maintained that she acted with urgency to return to her vehicle. "I got home. I changed. I got the antifreeze and the gallon of water, and I went back to put, you know, to put it in my car so I could drive it home." Her intent, she emphasized, was never to abandon the vehicle: "It was not something that I planned for. It was unexpected, you know. It was an unexpected breakdown, but I didn't abandon it. I was going right back." The discovery that her vehicle had been towed came as a shock. "I came back and it was gone, and I didn't even have 2 hours. Normally, people get, you know, an orange tag, a sticker, something, you know, they get some kind of warning." Irizarris questioned the communication attempts she was told had been made: "I was told that the officer tried calling me, but I've had the same number for years, and I know it's up to date with the Department of Licensing and stuff... I just, I never received any calls. I had no missed calls that night." Her immediate response was to contact both the police and the towing company. "I called the Bellingham... I called the police department," she testified, which is how she learned to contact Heston Towing. Her plea to the towing company fell on deaf ears: "I tried calling Heston towing, and I told him, 'Look, my vehicle, it just broke down on me real quick. I went to get the antifreeze. I was coming right back. I was going to get it home. I never abandoned it,' you know, and I tried to get them to stop their tracks. But they're like, 'Yeah, well, you have to deal with it in the morning,' you know." ## The Police Department's Justification Although no police officer appeared at the hearing, the department's position was represented through written statements and photographic evidence included in the hearing packet. According to the police documentation, officers determined that the vehicle's position created a traffic safety hazard that justified immediate removal. The police statement indicated that the vehicle was "obstructing the bike lane, and it was sticking out into the vehicle travel lane," creating what officers assessed would be "a traffic hazard when traffic started in the morning." This assessment formed the legal basis for the impound under the city's traffic safety authority. When Hearing Examiner Rice asked Irizarris to respond to this police characterization, she acknowledged the possibility of partial lane obstruction while maintaining her decision was reasonable given the circumstances. "Well, if it was sticking a little bit partially out of the line or the white line, I mean, I parked it as much to the right as possible, but, like I said, it is a pretty quiet road. There was no traffic at that time, and I was coming right back." Irizarris also questioned the timing of the police response and suggested alternatives that could have been pursued. "I mean, if they felt it was going to be a hazard once traffic did start in the morning, let's say around 6 AM, maybe they could have waited until about 5:30 or so to see if the vehicle was still there. I mean, they could have waited a little bit if they didn't call me, at least given me a couple hours. I went right back, you know." ## The Human Cost and Broader Context The hearing's most poignant moments came when Irizarris described the personal circumstances that made the loss of her vehicle particularly devastating. Beyond the immediate financial burden of the towing and storage fees, she faced significant health and family challenges that made transportation essential. "I haven't been working, you know. I was in a high-risk pregnancy, you know, when I lost the baby at 4 months in December, on Christmas Eve, and then we found a huge grapefruit-sized tumor in my uterus that I have to deal with. You know, it's kind of hard right now, walking isn't easy," Irizarris testified, her voice breaking during this part of her account. These health challenges intersected with her role as a caregiver: "I've been taking care of my mom. She's been sick. I almost lost her back in July. And so she needs a lot of care right now." The vehicle represented not just transportation but her ability to earn income through gig work during the limited hours when her mother was sleeping, and to access medical care for both herself and her mother. The accumulating storage fees created an increasingly impossible situation. When the hearing began, the fees totaled approximately $600. By the time Mr. Heston provided updated figures during the hearing, they had grown to over $1,370 and continued increasing daily. "I just, I need my vehicle. I can't afford to get it out. I can't afford those charges, I mean. As it is," Irizarris pleaded. ## Legal Standards and Procedural Questions Throughout the hearing, Hearing Examiner Rice focused on clarifying the factual record and the legal standards that would apply to her decision. The case hinged on several key legal questions: whether the police had proper authority to order the immediate tow, whether the towing company followed appropriate procedures, and whether the fees charged were lawful and reasonable. The abandonment classification became a point of particular scrutiny. While Heston explained that "abandoned" was simply the procedural term used when no owner or driver was present, the classification carried legal implications for how quickly a vehicle could be removed and what notice, if any, was required. Irizarris raised questions about the adequacy of the city's communication attempts and whether sufficient time had been allowed for her to return. "It wasn't even there 24 hours. It wasn't on private property. There was no signage anywhere saying that there was no parking allowed there, or that it would be towed if it was parked there. I mean, there was nothing, nothing at all giving any indication that it would be towed." The timing element proved crucial to both sides' arguments. While the police focused on the potential morning traffic hazard, Irizarris emphasized that she was actively working to resolve the situation: "I didn't leave any amount of time. I didn't go home and wait till morning. I didn't, nothing. I went right home and right back, you know, so it was just... it shouldn't have happened. They should have at least either actually called me or given me a couple hours at least." ## The Question of Proper Procedure The hearing revealed tensions between standardized enforcement procedures and the realities of emergency situations. While the towing company operated according to established protocols and state-regulated fee schedules, and police acted based on their assessment of traffic safety, Irizarris's situation highlighted the potential harshness of these procedures when applied to genuine emergencies. The absence of any warning system—no orange tag, no sticker, no successful phone contact—became a central issue. Irizarris repeatedly emphasized her expectation that some form of notice would precede towing: "Normally, people get, you know, an orange tag, a sticker, something, you know, they get some kind of warning." The case also raised questions about the reasonableness of the timeline. Less than two hours elapsed between when Irizarris left her vehicle and when it was towed, during which she was actively working to resolve the mechanical problem that had caused her to stop in the first place. ## Closing Arguments and Decision Timeline As the hearing concluded, both sides had presented their core arguments. Heston maintained that his company had followed all proper procedures and charged only state-authorized rates in response to a legitimate police request. Irizarris argued that the impound was improper because she had not abandoned her vehicle but was dealing with an emergency breakdown and actively working to resolve it. In her final statement, Irizarris returned to the legal standards she believed should apply: "I was trying to look at the laws, you know, in the Bellingham city laws, and just seeing that... I mean, it just feels like it wasn't proper. I was coming right back. It was not an abandoned vehicle. I did not leave it... it shouldn't have happened. They should have at least either actually called me or given me a couple hours at least." Hearing Examiner Rice concluded the proceeding by explaining her decision-making timeline and process: "Now my job is to apply the law, the facts to the law, and come up with the correct decision. And so I'm going to take this record under advisement, and I will be issuing my decision... I have 10 business days on the calendar that comes out to February 26th." ## What's At Stake The case represents more than a simple dispute over towing fees. It touches on fundamental questions about how cities balance traffic safety enforcement with consideration for residents facing genuine emergencies. The human dimension—a woman dealing with multiple health crises while caring for her sick mother, trying to earn basic living expenses through gig work, and facing the loss of her only transportation—adds weight to legal questions that might otherwise seem routine. The accumulating daily storage fees create increasing urgency, as each day of deliberation adds over $100 to a bill that already exceeds what many residents can afford. The hearing examiner's decision, due by February 26th, will determine not only whether Irizarris recovers her vehicle but also whether the city's procedures for handling disabled vehicles adequately account for emergency situations and provide reasonable opportunities for vehicle owners to resolve mechanical problems. The case ultimately asks whether a two-hour window in the early morning hours, during harsh winter weather, with a vehicle owner actively working to resolve a mechanical emergency, constitutes sufficient grounds for immediate towing—or whether such circumstances call for greater flexibility in enforcement procedures designed to protect both traffic safety and citizens' property rights.