my mom did that with her purse a long time, except she closed the strap in the door too, so instead of the purse just falling and dumping it's contents, she ended up driving with it flapping in the wind and it was completely empty once she got home
My sis got hers back...someone found it and put it in a mailbox. She was lucky cause she had a blank $300 money order in her wallet...that they apparently didn't see. She learned her lesson from that alone!