CHiPs/Tow Truck Lady

Tow Truck Lady
Season 3, Episode 20
Airdate	February 9, 1980
Written by	Max Hodge
Directed by	Larry Wilcox
← 3x19 Off Road	3x21 → The Strippers
CHiPs — Season Three

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Tow Truck Lady is the twentieth episode of the third season of CHiPs, and the sixty-fifth episode overall.

Jon and Ponch learn that their friend Danny, a tow truck driver and recent widower with a young daughter to support, has been stealing cars to repay debts to a loan shark. Things turn dangerous when the loan shark threatens to kill the daughter if Danny doesn't follow through with a scheme to ramp up the car thefts.

Guest Stars: Chris Robinson (Danny)), John Durren (Julian), Roger Perry (Howard), Christian Zika (Chris Roberts), Liberty Godshall (Ellen Roberts)

Co-Starring: Tonya Crowe (Marla), Mary McCusker (Nancy), Dick Patterson (Businessman)

Featuring: Nancy Bleier (Lisa), Robin T. Williams (Receptionist)

Plot Overview

Danny, a single father who works as a tow truck driver, has fallen on hard times. Because he and his late wife had no insurance to cover her terminal illness, Danny is left with debts that he can't repay, so he turns to a loan shark to help him.

The loan shark suggests he can make money by stealing expensive cars by having them towed away on trumped-up charges, selling the cars on the black market and then splitting the profits. Danny knows he is doing wrong but given he believed he had few options, he turns to the scheme. As Danny is friends with Jon and Ponch, he often leaves his daughter, Marla, in the patrol's care.

In the end, when Danny tries to get out of the scheme, the loan shark and his cronies threaten to kill – and not peacefully – Marla. Marla hides in a junked car and one of the bad guys uses a crane to lift the car, then drop it from a high height to kill her. Jon and Ponch are able to stop the bad guys ... then have no choice but to take a remorseful Danny into custody as well.

Interspersed with this story are at least two accidents:

• A reckless driver in a Ford Tornio station wagon misses his exit and turns in front of a produce truck. The truck turns over and spills its cargo – crates full of tomatoes – onto a middle-aged man in his Triumph Spitfire roadster. The man, uninjured but believing that he's bleeding, cries out in agony before passing out.

• A motorist discards a lit cigarette on the highway, and it lands on top of a some hay bales being hauled by a pickup truck. The hay catches fire, and as the driver loses control the hay begins spilling out onto the freeway, causing a major pileup. Jon, Ponch and the other officers manage to rescue the motorists before an explosion and resulting fire engulfs the truck and several other cars.

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