Schofield Barracks Staff Sgt. Rosa-La Williams thought she'd found a safe family car in 2005 when she paid $24,000 for a 2002 BMW 325i from a local car dealership. So she was shocked to learn a few weeks later that the car had once been wrecked, the warranty voided and she was stuck with a car she's afraid to drive.

"It's a beautiful car. I did all my homework," Williams said in an interview. But when problems turned up with a headlight that dealer Autosource couldn't fix, she did more research.

She called BMW and got back a computer report "that my car was totaled out." Williams said she had paid the private company Carfax for a car history report but got no warning beyond a mention of some painting.

Williams, who has been deployed to Iraq while the car remained parked, is still trying to figure a way out. She was referred from the military legal system to Honolulu attorney Jeff Crabtree who is suing the dealer and others involved in the sale.

"I still pay on the car every month," Williams said. "I have to pay for a car that just sits — $480 a month" and she still owes $15,500.

Williams and Crabtree are supporting a federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Washington, D.C., to require a national database that would allow car buyers to determine whether a vehicle has been stolen or rebuilt after a wreck.

Crabtree said the database might help protect car buyers. In Hawai'i and a number of other states, "you don't get any kind of history about who the previous owners are; it's all confidential." He said that leaves more room for hidden problems.

The three consumer groups who sued said that Congress required the federal government create such a database more than 15 years ago but the system is still not in place.

Public Citizen, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, and Consumer Action sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The groups want the court to order the Justice Department to move forward with creation of the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System.

The database would help consumers avoid purchasing a potentially dangerous used car by allowing them to instantly check the validity of a car's title and mileage and learn whether it had been stolen or was a junk or salvage vehicle. A salvage vehicle is one that was totaled in a collision, fire or flood or other event.

Williams said she went back to the dealer expecting to be able to return the car under the two-year warranty. But she said instead she got a hostile, rude response.

Autosource attorney Donald Spafford said his client didn't know the car had been wrecked. "My client was unaware, too," he said. "They were duped."

The case stirs up the pain of another Hawai'i family's worst nightmare — the death of a child. In 2003, 18-year-old Bobby Ellsworth graduated from high school and was returning from a fishing trip with a friend when his friend's truck hit a car head-on near Jamul, Calif.

Family attorney Julia Haus said the 1998 Dodge Dakota truck driven by Ellsworth's friend collided with a BMW with four people inside. The air bags in the BMW worked and everyone in that car survived.

Ellsworth was the only one who died. Paramedics and police officers at the crash scene were stunned to discover that the air bag compartments in the truck had been removed and the cavity stuffed with paper.

Haus said the family moved from California to the Big Island because of the tragedy. "They couldn't stand all the memories," she said from her office in San Diego. "No one wants to talk about the death of their child; it was just too difficult for them."

Haus said she favors the effort to protect consumers.

"We believe that this happens more often than people realize," Haus said. "You've got to be really careful. You and I don't know if our air bags are working."

Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said "people's lives are at risk because they are buying used cars that are missing air bags or have other critical safety defects due to their hidden histories as junked or salvaged vehicles."

Under the 1992 law, junk and salvage yard operators are required to file monthly reports to the database operator. Each report is supposed to contain a list of the vehicle identification numbers of all junk and salvage vehicles obtained during the previous month. The law also requires insurance companies to file similar reports. The suit asks the court to order the Justice Department to issue the regulations within 30 days of finding the agency in violation.

Sgt. Williams has signed up to stay in Hawai'i for three more years, knowing that will make her likely to return to Iraq a few months after her baby's birth next month.

"I have to get this fixed," Williams said.

INSPECTIONS FOR PROTECTION

Rosemary Shahan, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, said knowing whether a vehicle was totalled or not is the single-most important piece of information about the vehicle.

"More important than the sales price, its crash-test rating, how many air bags it has, or anything else," she said. "That is because even if it did well in the crash tests, and appears to be a bargain, if it's salvage, that means it didn't pay to put it back together right."

She said consumers should be aware that: