By Blair Anthony Robertson - Bee Staff Writer
(photo by Michael A. Jones)Vito Petta of Sacramento is reunited with his handmade wooden cart. Thieves had broken into his sign painting business Dec. 23 and made off with the prized possession that took him eight years to build.
Vito Petta got his prized cart back Thursday, five days after thieves broke into the family's sign-painting business and made off with a work of art eight years in the making.
An alert reader recognized the cart after seeing a photo in Thursday's edition of The Bee. The reader, who remained anonymous, called the newspaper and provided an address to a rural four-unit apartment building in El Dorado.
The Petta family responded immediately. Vito Petta, who is 84, waited nervously at his Sacramento home while his son, Robert, drove to the small town about an hour east of Sacramento.
When he first spotted the cart along Reservation Road, "it was disbelief," Robert Petta said. "All of a sudden, I look over, and way in the corner in this back parking lot ... it was just there."
He said he became concerned for his safety, aware that the thieves could be nearby. When an El Dorado County sheriff's deputy arrived, Robert Petta took possession of the cart and the trailer it was on and towed it back to Sacramento.
Vito Petta spent eight years researching, building and designing the cart, which is a replica of what was used prior to pickup trucks in his ancestral homeland of Sicily. He finished the cart around 1991, and over the years it became a prized family heirloom, stored at the sign shop and brought out for special occasions.
When it was stolen, Vito Petta, a retired sign painter and World War II pilot, was crestfallen and felt he might never see it again.
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