A Thief Poses As A Manager

In my time, I've heard of people who impersonated doctors, lawyers and other learned professionals.  Hey, I even recall stories about someone else who posed as a Saudi prince and a guy who managed to pass himself off as a Rockefeller relative.

But a bike shop manager?

Folks who pretend to be doctors, lawyers, princes and Rockefellers managed to bilk people out of lots of money.  But the old joke about the bike industry is that if you can get into it, you can end up with a small fortune.  How?  Start off with a big one.

Also, I have to admit that as long as medical procedures or cases aren't botched, it can be pretty funny to watch an impostor hoist on his or her own petard.  The ersatz Saudi prince did himself in when, at dinner in a fancy restaurant with a would-be investor in one of his schemes, he ordered an appetizer of prosciutto.  The phony Rockefeller's scheme ended when one of his would-be investors wondered why he, if he was a Rockefeller, he spoke with a French accent.

They lived high while their schemes lasted.  But what bike shop manager ever got to date a Playboy model or live in Mickey Rourke's house? 

So why would someone pose as a bike shop manager?  To sell stolen bikes.  

That, according to Colorado State University police, is what 23-year-old Gordon Stone was doing when they arrested him.  He took photos of  bikes parked on the Fort Collins campus and posted them on the "Let's Go" app--with the name of John Lambert, who manages the Recycled Cycles shop near the campus.  

Someone would spot the photo of, say, a GT Transeo, and because Lambert's name and Recycled Bicycles were attached to it, assume it was legitimate.  When that person expressed interest in the bike, Stone would go to the campus, cut the lock and sell the bike for a fraction of what it would cost in the shop.



Lambert found out about the scheme only when a friend texted him to ask whether he was still selling a certain bike--the Transeo--online.  "I responded with, what?" he recalls.  

He says that Stone's actions have hurt the shop's, and his, reputation.  Now that Stone has been arrested, Lambert says he may pursue defamation charges against him.  After all, the reason what do a shop and its manager have besides their reputation?

A Bike Reunites Them

If anyone has ever given you a bicycle, you haven't forgotten it.  Even if the bike is long gone, you still have a memory of the person who gave it to you--especially if you were very young when you were so gifted.

That memory can be a very powerful force--enough, it turns out, to reunite you, a quarter-century later, with the person who gave you the "freedom machine." 

The power of that memory is intensified if you are a small child in a foreign country where you and your parent are just learning to speak the language--and your homeland is in ruins.

When Mevan Babakar was five years old, she and her mother left war-torn Iraq on an odyssey that took them through Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia before they arrived in the Netherlands.   A man befriended them while they lived at a refugee center in the city of Zolle. "My mum said the greatest thing he did was listen when nobody really treated you like a human," she recalls of the kind stranger.

Mevan Babakar as a child refugee in the Netherlands

After Babakar and her family moved out of the center, the man visited them and presented them with bicycles.  "I will never forget how joyous I felt," she explains.  "It's not about my bike, it's about my self-worth."

Eventually, she and her mother settled in London, where her father joined them.  They lost touch with the man.  (If you are young, remember that we are talking about a time before Facebook or most other social media.)  But, of course, she did not forget him.

Recently, she took a trip to re-trace her family's journey.  One stop took her to Zolle, where she hoped to find the man and thank him for his kindness.  After a series of dead-ends, she posted an old photo of her with the man on Twitter.  Arjen van der Zee, a volunteer journalist in the city, spotted it and recognized the man as a former co-worker in the center.  

He took her to a town about an hour away, just on the other side of the Dutch border with Germany.  The man--who wanted to be identified only by his first name, Egbert, believed his gesture "wasn't all that much to make a fuss about," but was "grateful that it brought us together again."

He's 72 years old now and is happy that his wish for Mevan Babakar came true.  "He was proud that I'd become a strong and brave woman."

I like to think that getting a bicycle had something to do with it.

When Is A Bicycle "Irrelevant"?

I was intrigued by the headline:  Woman Flees Police On Irrelevant Bicycle.

It got me to wondering:  What, exactly, is an irrelevant bicycle?  Is it one that can't be ridden anymore?  Or is "Irrelevant" a brand?  (Now that would be terrible marketing!)

Turns out, said velocipede matched the description of one that was stolen in Hilo, Hawaii.  That is why cops pursued its rider--29-year-old Maria Duquette.  I probably would have believed, as they did, that she stole the bike, which she used to lead the gendarmes in a wild chase through Hilo Town to the Hilo Bay Front.  There, she ditched the wheels and jumped into the water.  

She swam, and cops lost sight of her.  A helicopter and boat search didn't yield any sign of her.  Later, though, someone saw her on Coconut Island.  She tried, again, to swim away, but officers pursued her into the ocean and took her into custody.  She was charged with traffic violations related to the chase and disobeying an officer's direction.

So they got their perp.  But, as it turned out, the bicycle wasn't the one that was reported stolen.  I guess that's what the headline writer meant by "irrelevant"--to the investigation.

As some of you might know, newspaper headlines are almost never written by the person who wrote the article.  I am sure that such was the case for the story and title I've linked.  I feel sorry for whoever wrote the article:  When I wrote for a newspaper, a few of my articles bore titles (not written by me, of course!) that were silly or even irrelevant.