This 1959 Sun Cruiser Camper was last seen on June 26 on Highway 218 near Hills. The license plate number is CW9321. Photos courtesy of Jayme Piche.

An Iowa City resident was on her way home from a weekend camping trip when the unfortunate happened.

Jayme Piche’s 1959 Sun Cruiser camper affectionately named “Daisy Mae” was stolen from the side of Highway 218 North outside of Hills June 26. Piche explains, “I’ve owned it for two years. I bought it in Michigan and I’ve just used it locally and I was planning on taking a trip to Michigan with it for a music festival. And I had camped over the weekend at a friend’s house and was coming back into town and hit a bump where they were doing road construction and it popped off and went into the ditch.”

DOT workers instructed Piche to leave the camper in the ditch and return the next day to pick it up. Piche notified police of her camper’s location and they put marker tape around it, but that didn’t prevent what happened next, “When I got back there in the morning it was gone, I saw tracks from someone that hauled it out and I actually found a few pieces of the trailer frame by the side of the road. You could see on the fresh asphalt where someone had dragged it and marked the asphalt.”

Piche shared pictures of Daisy Mae on her Facebook page June 27, and has since garnered over 6,000 shares from people wanting to help find this retro camper with an aqua-colored door and yellow wings. A witness told Piche they saw a dark-colored truck hauling the camper on Highway 218 around 4:15 a.m. the morning it was stolen. The camper has not yet been found. If you see the camper notify the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department.