Florida Grandma’s New License Plate Spells Out Something She Didn’t Expect
Nancy Dello Stritto opened her mail in Pompano Beach, Florida, expecting a routine license plate renewal. What she got instead was “SQZ A55,” a combination that spells out something a lot less routine. The almost-77-year-old, who lives in a senior community, said she “went ballistic” when she saw it. Weeks later, she’s not so sure she wants to give it back.
Dello Stritto’s new tag came through Florida’s standard 10-year plate renewal, printed at a state prison facility in North Florida like most Florida plates. Nothing about the process was unusual. She didn’t request a personalized plate and didn’t pay extra for one. The letters and numbers just happened to line up into something the DMV apparently didn’t catch, or didn’t think twice about.
“I can’t even believe how this could pass through inspection,” she said, “if there’s an inspection.”
Her first instinct was to march straight to the DMV and demand a swap. She still can. Florida allows plate exchanges, and Dello Stritto has said she plans to at least flag it with the state so someone there knows what went out in the mail.
But the neighborhood had other ideas
Word travels fast in a retirement community, and this was too good not to talk about. Her sons heard about it first, then their friends, then a good chunk of the older men around her building. All of them landed on the same advice: keep it.
The vote, by her own count, has been climbing. It stood at 16 to 1 in her favor not long after the story broke. By the time she talked to CBS Miami again, it had grown to roughly 26 to 1.
The internet has been just as firmly on her side. “Keep it and display it with pride,” one commenter wrote. Another joked the plate “went to the wrong person.” A third summed up the whole situation in three words: “It’s like a Seinfeld episode.”
That kind of pressure works. She’s gone from mortified to something closer to amused.
“I can handle it, if I get a few honks here and there,” she said. “Actually, being over 70, I might like a few honks.”
Whether she’ll actually be the one driving it around her senior community full-time is still up in the air. But for now, the Hyundai Sonata is staying put, plate and all.
The story picked up steam after CBS News Miami first reported it, and the comments have been overwhelmingly on Team Keep It.
