Confessions of a Teenage Emblem Thief

“The Big Score” by Og Maciel

I was fourteen when I first heard about people who “harvested” car emblems for the thrill of it. Nobody in my small coastal town had even imagined such a thing—which, in my mind, meant I had the advantage of being the first to try. Over the next four or five months, I taught a handful of trusted friends the quiet finesse required to pry an emblem loose without leaving a scratch. I became something of a connoisseur, only going after the really special ones—novelty emblems, rare designs, or the irresistible shield-shaped badge on the Ford Del Rey Ghia. I could never have too many of those.

Ford Del Rey Ghia

With time, I grew bolder. Too bold. I’d test myself by harvesting emblems in broad daylight, half out of curiosity and half out of teenage arrogance. One night I came far too close to getting caught, and that was enough to send me into early “retirement.” By then, I had more than 500 emblems hidden away in a secret spot. And as more kids began whispering about this strange new hobby and asking me to teach them, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone let my name slip. So, like the pirates I adored in Treasure Island and every adventure movie I watched growing up, I buried my loot—literally. Only one other person knows where.

That childhood memory became the seed for my book The Big Score. In it, a new girl in town, Kate, teams up with a motley crew of characters inspired by friends from my youth as they set out to break the local record for harvested emblems in New Bern. The book was later translated into Brazilian Portuguese and won the 2023 International Latino Book Award.

But the story is about far more than emblems. It’s about friendship, belonging, fear, loyalty, and the small, electric moments that shape who we become. And if it does its job, you may never look at a car emblem the same way again.