How Not To Sell A Stolen Bike

When I wrote for a newspaper, I talked with a man who was (or at least claimed to have been) a "professional thief."  In other words, he said, stealing--jewels, mainly-- was his metier. And, as such, he and others like him had a set of guidelines--a code of professional conduct, if you will.  They included such gems as "Never kill unless there is no other alternative" and "Never steal from anyone poorer than yourself."

One thing that separates professionals, like the one he claimed to be, and others is that he stole strictly to "get paid," he said.  "You steal, you sell, you spend," he explained, unlike amateurs who might, say, steal out of poverty and desperation or to support a drug habit.

By implication, that meant "you shouldn't steal to support your stealing"  and "you shouldn't use something stolen to steal." In other words, a professional thief never  should do what two men in Oregon seem to have done.

A bicycle was stolen in Eugene, the state's capital.  The victim found it for sale on Facebook Marketplace and arranged to meet the sellers at the Walmart in nearby Springfield.  He apprised the cops of what he was doing.

Just before the gendarmes arrived, one of the sellers, who drove the car used to transport the bike, went into the store.  The officers, seeing the bike in the back seat, took the passenger--35-year-old Guy Devault--into custody on a warrant.  Shortly afterward, they caught the driver--Juan Sanchez, also 35 years old--in the store.

An investigation concluded that Devault was responsible for the stolen bike. But, as it turned out, the car was also stolen.  So, in addition to his outstanding warrant on for kidnapping, Sanchez now also faces a charge of being in possession of a stolen vehicle:  the car used to transport the bike.

The fellow I talked to when I was writing for a newspaper would have known better than that.

  

A Cycle Of Karma?

One of the most depressing things that can happen to us is the theft of our bikes.

Just as dispiriting as the loss of something we love and depend on is the realization that we probably won't see it again and, it seems, nobody who isn't a cyclist cares.  We report our losses to the police and other authorities and they tell us that we're not likely to get our wheels back--which is another way of saying they have other fish to fry.

Perhaps the best most cyclists can hope for is what Amanda Needham experienced.

The Brooklyn resident's bike, which she rode to work, was stolen from the front of her house on 3 March. After finding empty space where her machine had been, she took some cardboard and yellow paint to make a sign she would post in that spot.

It begins, "To the person who stole my bike:  I hope you need it more than me."  She follows with a lament about how she depended on it and what it cost her.  "Next time, steal. Or not steal," is how her plea ends.

That sign stood for five days before she heard a knock at her door. She thought it was a delivery. Indeed, it was, but not one she was expecting:  a stranger bearing a used kid's bike with a flat tire.  

A few days later, she got another knock on her door.  This time, an older woman greeted her with a hug and told her if she found another bicycle, she'd bring it to her.  

Not surprisingly, Ms. Needham was touched. "These people were visibly poor and giving from what they had," she said.  But they didn't prepare her for what--or, more specifically, who--came by later.  Steven Powers, an antiques dealer, was riding by and saw her sign.  He posted a photo of it on Instagram and, just as he was thinking of offering to buy her sign--for $200, what she paid for the used bike-- another dealer in the UK offered to split the cost.  "That was the little push I needed," he said.

The sign, he said, is "graphically interesting."  But most important, he believed, is that her message "wasn't angry."

Needham used that $200 to buy another bike.  Before she did that, though, she took the kids' bike to Court Cycles, a local repair shop owned by mechanic Ms. JoAnne Nicolosi.  She offered to repair the bike for free, and Amanda offered to set up her shop on social media.  They now plan to raffle the machine, dubbed #karmacycle, for free later this month.

While she isn't glad she lost her bike, Ms. Needham is happy to have met the people she's met.  Most important, though, is not that she lost her wheels or "got a secondhand bike for someone else."  Rather, she says, she just wants people to "remember that those tiny acts can really go a long way."

Reunited, Two Years Later

In some earlier posts, I bemoaned the fact that stolen bicycles are almost never returned to their rightful owners.  In most cities, if someone takes your bike, you have less than a two percent chance of ever seeing it again.

Since I don't want this blog to turn into a repository of lamentable statistics and depressing stories, I try to draw attention to the outliers and happy endings, whenever I hear about them.

Trevor Pryor

Two years ago, Trevor Pryor was working for Arizona State University in Tempe.  He propped his machine in a hallway for "only a few seconds" while he said good-bye to some co-workers.

Well, "a few seconds" is all a thief needs.  "I turned around and the bike is gone," Pryor recalls.  He checked online marketplaces like Offerup.com and Letgo.com, but found "no real leads."  

His bike

He despaired of ever seeing his bike--"my first  bike I bought with my own money", he explained--again.  That is, until last week, when a friend noticed the bike on the Facebook page of the Bicycle Recovery Action Team (BRAT:  what an acronym!), a group of vigilantes that keeps an eye out for stolen bikes.  

The friend set up a meeting to look at it .  Pryor, accompanied by an ASU police officer, went to a warehouse full of bikes in Tempe.  There, a man wheeled the bike out and the officer intervened.  "Did you know that bike is stolen?," he asked.

The man's boss claimed he bought the bike at a pawnshop and offered to sell it to Pryor for $100 because he "didn't want to take a loss."
 

Reporters who followed this story went back to that warehouse the other day.  It was full of bikes, but there were no people there.

At least Pryor has his bike back.  Hopefully, other bikes in that warehouse will end up with their rightful owners.

How A Stolen Bike Became The Gift That Gave Back

By now you know that I have a soft spot for people who, in whatever ways, bring bikes to kids who couldn't otherwise afford them.

Most of the stories I've posted so far are about individuals or organizations who restore old bikes that might otherwise have ended up in a landfill.   Some started out as one-person operations and mushroomed into local non-profit organizations.

Well, today I'm going to tell you about a kid who gave his bike to another kid, and whose family helped out that other kid's family at the holidays.  And there's a particularly interesting "twist" to this story.

Fifty years ago, on Christmas Eve 1967, 18-year-old William Lynn Weaver was walking around in his neighborhood, the Mechanicsville area of Knoxville, Tennessee.  He saw another boy gliding down the street on a bike.  "Boy, that looks like my brother's bike," he thought.

When he got home, he asked his younger brother Wayne whether he knew where his bicycle was.  "It's down on the steps," he replied.  Except that it wasn't.

William Lynn Weaver with his brother in 1963.

Well, Mr. Weaver tracked down the kid who took his brother's bike--to an unlit shack in an alley--and planned to confront the kid.  But his father, who accompanied him, told him,"Just shut up and let me talk."

He knocked on the door.  An elderly man answered.  Inside, the shack was cold and dark, with only a single candle for light.  It turned out that the thief was indeed the old man's grandson.

He and William took the bike and walked home.

The father told the mother, who was cutting a turkey, about the incident.  She said nothing, but packed up some of the food.  Then "my father went to the coal yard and got a bag of coal," William recalls.  Then his father looked at his brother and said, "You've got another bike, don't you?"  The brother nodded, and the three of them returned to the shack with the food, coal and bike.  

The father handed over $20--not an inconsiderable sum in those days--and said, "Merry Christmas."  The man broke down in tears.

William Lynn Weaver today.

As William explains, his family wasn't as badly-off as the boy and man who lived in the shack, but they didn't have much, either.  "My father was a chauffeur, and my mother was a domestic," he explained.  "That Christmas, I don't remember what gift I got, but I do know that [giving to the boy and his grandfather] made me feel better than any Christmas I've ever had."

Ah, the power of a bike...