CONCLUSION TO "COSTING ME THOUSANDS" incident: I started this thread on 10/12 when my wife parked her car at the post office. When she came out people were yelling that an old man in a white pick-up had hit her car and took off. No one got the license and when we checked the Sentry USB disk we discovered that it had stopped recording 10 minutes earlier with the "USB write speed too slow" message. Here's what's happened since then:
We discovered this was considered a "collision" for insurance purposes. Comprehensive only covers "acts of God" or terrorism - things other than being hit by another car, whether you're in it or not. This is GEICO, by the way, but I checked several other insurance companies, too. Some people say their insurance would cover it under "comprehensive". I envy them since we have $2,500 deductible. An article says that Tesla is now saving a few days of Sentry and Dashcam footage but apparently that was a misunderstanding. I asked Tesla about it to be sure but haven't heard back yet. The post office doesn't have cameras in the parking lot and there are no other businesses nearby so no chance to find the guy.
The left-side passenger door is dented and scraped, the driver's door has paint damage with very minor denting. Got an estimate from Amato's in San Diego, which has been repairing Tesla's since 2013 and is VERY highly rated. Their operation is very impressive. The back door has to be replaced but the front door is repairable. Both doors and the back fender on that side have to be repainted. Anyway, looks like they can do it for less than $4,000. I've decide to leave insurance out it. I haven't had a claim in over 30 years (and that was a parking lot incident, too) and we want to keep our record clean. With so many stories of Tesla's insurance rates rising I don't want to give them any excuse to raise our rates. Not sure this was the right decision but oh, well. For a couple of days I was obsessing over "if only the damned Sentry mode had worked I wouldn't be paying anything" but I think most Tesla owners accept that we're part of a grand experiment and have to take the bad with the good. Love my Tesla.
One other thing - we found out they had back doors in stock but front doors are hard to get so we were lucky there. In ten days I'll have my car back.