MOUNT DESERT — A delivery crew inadvertently picked up the wrong green Jeep from a parking lot in Northeast Harbor, loaded it onto a barge, and took it three miles offshore to the Cranberry Isles before discovering they had the wrong vehicle on June 13.

The Jeep’s owner, Jen McWain, of Franklin, who works at the Mount Desert Town Office, didn’t even know her vehicle was missing until she got a telephone call from police. “The first thing the dispatcher said was ‘don’t panic,’” Ms. McWain recalled.

Apparently the barge crew had orders to pick up a green Jeep from the police department parking lot and deliver it to the island. They were told the keys would be in it. Ms. McWain’s vehicle is the same color although the model is slightly different. In fact, the two Jeeps have often been parked in adjacent spots in the same lot. “I’d noticed that Jeep just a few days before,” she said.

And, Ms. McWain admitted sheepishly, she had left her keys in the Jeep and the vehicle unlocked.

“I guess they got out to the island and called the customer on a cell phone to ask where to leave it,” she explained. “He told them he was confused as he was sitting in his Jeep in a parking lot in Ellsworth.”

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