NY man finally gets vintage VW bus 8 years after seeing it

NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - There's a lot of buzz about the newest bus on the block.

"It's a beauty," said one Long Islander. "They don't make it like this anymore."

And that's why Kyle Cropsey of Lindenhurst needed to have it.

"I'm not really a car guy, I just love Volkswagens," Cropsey said. "I always have since I was young."

Nearly eight years ago, the English teacher, who was 16 at the time and didn't even have a license, spotted the 1971 Volkswagen bus on his way to go surfing in Queens.

His mom Lorenza supported him but thought it was crazy.

"We were driving and he said, 'Stop, turn around, go back, I need to see that van,'" she said.

He scribbled a note asking the owner to give him a call if he ever wanted to sell.

"The window was just cracked a tiny bit—I saw [the note] fall to the floor," Kyle said. "It didn't land on the seat and I said, 'That's it.'"

That was it—until he received a call on Saturday from Cris Mead, who was more than 2,000 miles away in California.

"I found this note in my dad's Volkswagen," Mead told Fox 5 by phone. So he told Kyle to call him back if he was still interested in buying.

Mead's father, Cornelius, who bought the van and named it Matilda more than four decades ago, passed away last week. When cleaning out the van, Mead found Kyle's note tucked away in a travel log.

"I'm just so happy the note was still in the van and he was still at the same phone number," Mead said. "It worked out beautifully."

The bus went on many family adventures with its old owner. But how many miles? We may never know. Each time the odometer hits 100,000, it resets.

Kyle dropped about 15 other notes into similar buses and never heard back from anyone. He is close to finishing work on a 1976 lime green VW bus he bought two years ago. Now he has another project.   

"'I said name your price, what are you looking to get for it?'" Kyle said he asked Mead. "He said, 'Well, our only price is that we ask that you send photos to us as you restore her. Besides that, she's yours. We want you to have her for free.'"

Kyle said the Mead family restored his faith in humanity. In turn, Kyle promised to restore their father's bus.

"I'm a big believer in the law of attraction—when you put out good energy and good things come back to you," Kyle said. "This bus came back and found me eight years later."