Vampire Confessional
For years, Solar Gard has had rolls of film go missing without any evidence of foul play. The fact that it wouldn’t happen very often and that it wasn’t an excessive amount of film, we chose not to publicize it each and every time.
It wasn’t until earlier this year when we introduced our newest film, VortexIR (which has the best sun protection on the market) that rolls started to go missing more frequently and a major investigation had to be called into action.
Thanks to the help of local law enforcement, our loyal staff, and all of our dealers – we were able to catch the thief!
Turns out, the thief is a lot more entertaining than we could have ever expected. His story is rich with creative ways he’s persevered and protected himself and his family from the sun. We’re thrilled we get to share his story one bit at a time.
Here’s a letter written soon after he was caught:
Humans think of me as twisted, but the most sardonic thing about my life was being born to mirror and glass makers. Truth be told, I wouldn’t recognize the face looking back at me if I could see my reflection. I mean, what does a person planning his 400th birthday look like?
My parents taught me how to make glass, but what earned me the royal title of Count was figuring out how to mass produce glass and widely distribute it throughout northern Spain and southern France. This was before the invention of suspension or even trucks, so moving glass was even harder than making mirrors… but I digress.
I was to glass in the 1600s as Apple is to the selfie today and my riches rivaled the aforementioned… so did my parties. There wasn’t a bedroom in all the land that didn’t have my mirrors in it… this included kings and queens who took note and elevated my social status. Before long everyone knew me as Count Dagin. Man, did I have a lot of fun in those days!
Without getting into great detail one night there was a party with a lot of beautiful people. Turns out they had been beautiful for a REALLY long time and after a little excess, lying and propositioning my life would eternally swirl down a vortex of darkness… in the best possible way… at least for the first couple hundred years.
I had been a night owl, so only being able to go outside after dark had little impact on me at first. Being a household name made for lots of invitations and people’s threshold for saying “no” to my requests was almost non-existent. The catch is, while I can’t die, there is a lifespan to being popular, just ask Donny Osmond. A couple of hundred years later and a few too many late night snacks and no one would call me Count. As for the name Dagin, well it was in every bedroom, but now as a warning to little kids.
You know how you find yourself needing less sleep the older you get?… Try hitting your 300th birthday. Insomnia is real, but for me, that means increasingly being awake during daylight hours… especially in the long hot Summers. Traveling used to be a puff of smoke, a late night flap and I’d be wherever I wanted in minutes. But when I hit 350 years old, let’s just say it got a little harder to make the change. I had become a shut-in.
I was hiding indoors all day, and at night, there was only so far I could drive before I had to turn around or find shelter. I had become a hostage to the sun. The very glass that made my life ruined me for cars and exterior rooms. I was in a very dark place.
One day, while flipping around on TV before bed, I landed on Days of Our Lives. There was a commercial of a scrumptious little family playing on a beach. It was an ad for Sunscreen with an SPF of 75. Now, I may not be the smartest being, but having worked with glass. I knew a thing or two about visible and ultraviolet light transmission through glass. During some low points, I may have done a little experimentation to see what kind of UV protection I would need so I could walk in daylight once more. SPF 75 was groundbreaking for modern sunscreen, but based on my calculations to be outside I would need an SPF of 275 or greater. There had to be a way!
SPF 75 means that you can lather up and spend 75 hours in the sun and only get as crispy as spending 1 hour outside without sunscreen. Take into account that there are only 24 hours in a day and you begin to see the natural barrier for skin companies in the SPF race. Still, the commercial with the family funbags had me yearning to keep researching.
For me, “solar” was a five letter word, but when I came across the Solar Gard website it changed my life. When applied to windows or glass on cars, Solar Gard window film offered an SPF of 285 or greater… Greater!!!! The good news is that only professionals could install Solar Gard window film, so I didn’t even need to come up with a story as to why I couldn’t apply the film myself. A call and a few days later and my world opened up from the confines of a few inner rooms to as far as I could drive in my car. The daylight could no longer stop me! But you know what could? My QVC addiction.
As it would turn out, even my once vast riches would stand no chance against QVC. To this day, when I see Lori Granier on Shark Tank, I grimace. I had just enough money to cover the windows of one of my castles and four of my 87 vehicles with Solar Gard Window Film. Hey, who needs a garage when your dungeon used to hold 400 people? Now that I had a taste of freedom, I wanted to feel it in all of my vehicles and dozens of my homes scattered across the world.
You see, I didn’t need a few installations, more like rolls of this sweet, invisible freedom-finding barrier. I had a choice, I could steal from hundreds of dealerships or abscond with rolls of film from a few major Solar Gard warehouses. The latter seemed the better option.
Which brings me to this confessional. I’m not sure if it will ever leave this police station and will likely never see a courthouse after I mesmerize you, but this has been cathodic exercise and please send my best to the rest of the precinct and the San Diego Solar Gard warehouse. Remember, not even the daylight can stop me now, so if you have found this letter in the trash, might I suggest you return it and put this out of your mind. I’ve got a new lease on life… I’d hate for that to change yours.
Sincerely,
