MikeM

Most of the scenarios I can think of usually end up with an angry person up in the face of the someone trying to help with security and sometimes results in letters to management about 'how they were wronged'.

"You had it towed?!?!? But it was only there for a week!"
"Some azzhole hit my car when I was in the store!"
"That lightpole/rail/curb scraped my car!"
etc.
etc.

Just my 2 cents, but in this case security noticed something odd and stepped up to a situation. It could have easily been ignored and turned into a "Where is my car? Hey someone stole my car!" type issue (consider how angry to be that person).

Perhaps a note to building management along the lines of, "I appreciate the level of awareness/service by [name] when I had a mechanical issue with my car in your lot". It is the holidays and compliments during this busy time are unicorn rare, well hopefully not fully unicorn rare.

KevinGross

It's a somewhat gray area of the law, as I understand it. If the strip mall has responsibility for safeguarding your car while it is, in effect, in their hands, this could create a bailment. There is an article under the Legal Files byline in the current issue of SCM about a Panamera that was lost / stolen by a hotel valet. Informative background. Me, I'd say thank you and kudos to your mall for watching out for you.

morghen

Guy deserves a beer for going trough the trouble just to make sure the car is not being stolen.
Hard to find people like that in today's world.

Winter44

I'm sure the security guard is notified that he should expect a car to be towed, or has the authority by the owner to make the call on whether a care should be towed or not. Since a random tow truck came up to tow your car, he prevents it because he wasn't notified of the tow or didn't authorize a tow of that vehicle. Although a minor inconvenience, its a benefit to you that this happened. Like others have said, it could be a criminal disguised as a tow company and just take your car and leave.