Ex-Playboy Bunny Anna Nicole Smith pulled up in a white stretch-limo and invited a student on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to California, so he left his car in a lot he didn’t have a permit for.

He got a parking ticket.

This far-fetched story came from a parking ticket appeal Department of Transportation Services employee Dustin Page read two years ago. Of the 10,000 appeals the junior accounting major and six other student Transportation Services employees reviewed last year, many contained equally eccentric stories.

Most parking perps appeal their tickets – the department usually receives 25 to 100 appeals a day – or pay them and leave it at that, said Tony Barnes, supervisor for the student reviewers. But a small group of students are chronic offenders.

“There are about 20 students who just refuse to park where they’re supposed to,” he said. Just before his interview with a Diamondback reporter, he said a student came in who had 159 outstanding parking tickets, amounting to roughly $7,500 in fines – a year’s worth of in-state tuition.

About two-thirds of the appeals reviewed last year were voided or reduced. Failed appeals have driven some students – and their moms – to tears, Barnes said.

“I’ve gotten phone calls where the parents and the daughter are crying on the phone,” he said.

When students appeal tickets, the reviewers consider the type of violation, the student’s ticket history and if they have reused an excuse, Page said. All the information is kept on a computer database and in files.

Dominique Prophet, a sophomore criminology and criminal justice and psychology major who also reviews appeals, said she too has seen eccentric excuses from students. For instance, she said one student said he didn’t pay a ticket because he needed the money to eat at Chipotle.

Wielding the power to void and reduce students’ parking tickets is a seductive privilege; both reviewers said their friends have tried to persuade them to help with their parking tickets.

“They think we’re going to do something for them,” Prophet said. They don’t.

A lot of students don’t read the back of the tickets, which state appeals can only be made within 15 days of receiving the ticket, Prophet said, further adding to the complaints lodged against the department and students’ parking woes.

But believe it or not, the number of tickets issued in the last few years is down, and is expected to be down again this year too, said David Allen, director of Transportation Services.

“We’re probably not issuing half the tickets we were issuing 10 years ago,” Allen said. In fiscal year 2002, for instance, 117,910 tickets were issued, while in fiscal year 2003 that number fell to 99,453, according to the department’s annual reports.

More clearly marked signs and a smaller student population attribute to the decrease, Allen said.