Photos of the Bike | Epic Version of the Story | How it was Recovered | Updates

My bike was stolen from outside of the bioengineering building at UW on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 between 4 and 7 p.m. I didn't have my regular Kryptonite U-lock with me because I thought I was going to need to leave my bike at Recycled Cycles over the weekend for maintenance. However, they were able to fix my shifting problem in approximately 10 minutes rather than 3 days, and sent me along my way. My bike was relatively safely stored in my building's secured bike room all day, but I had to TA that evening on campus. A labmate of mine let me borrow his cable lock, which we both knew was a bad idea, but figured it'd be ok for just 3 hours. So I pedaled over to campus and locked up my bike. I needed to get home quickly after lab because I was catching a redeye to NYC and also it's not the nicest walk back to lab, so I didn't want to leave it there and go back for it. I would have brought it inside the building with me, but it was raining... Pretty much all the stars aligned. When I got back to the bike rack after lab, my bike was gone. Well, except for the cut lock.

So in the two hours before I had to leave for the airport, I waited about 45 minutes for a UW officer to call me back to file a police report (I had the serial number and pictures), filed a police report, scarfed down some semblance of dinner, and did not charge my cell phone. My college track team alumni reuntion weekend in NYC was punctuated with scanning craigslist at every free moment looking for my bike...or pieces of it. My case was assigned a detective at UW who called me while I was at the Armory watching the meet to let me know what was going on.

Once I got back to Seattle Sunday night, I made up fliers and hounded my detective to make time to meet with me. He eventually relented and let me come talk to him Tuesday morning. He told me there were about 30 bikes stolen from UW a month, and he recovers about 1-5% of them. Of the ones that are recovered, it sounded like a lot of them were found by the owner, either in person or on the internet, or by someone else who knew it was stolen and saw it around. He said most stolen bikes are sold through Craigslist rather than eBay. He was going to keep an eye on Craigslist and a database that some pawn shops register serial numbers of property they take in with. He also suggested I start looking for a new bike.

I posted fliers and kept looking on Craigslist. And not just Seattle Craigslist. I scanned every single bicycle posting in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver that came up over the next week or so. I also occasionally did a keyword search in every major city in the US. Friends were doing the same thing...searching various places online. I emailed every used bike shop I could find and gave fliers to every friend I had who rides a bike regularly. The next weekend, a friend (who had his bike stolen from UW not 3 hours after I told him my sob story) and I dropped fliers off at all the pawn shops on Aroura.

After a few weeks, I kind of figured I'd fallen into the 95-99% of people who never saw their bikes again, and decided to start searching Craigslist for a replacement, while of course, still keeping an eye out for my bike. A week went by with not a single bike in my size, with good parts, and in my price range showing up in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area. This Thursday night, I was particularly dejected after riding my old hybrid to work (horrible horrible bike, I have no idea how I rode it for over a year). So I decided to check Portland Craigslist for fun. I wanted to be reassured that used bikes in my size actually existed. And, hey, if I found the perfect bike, Portland is only 150 miles away. I did a search in the greater Portland Craigslist, narrowing the results to my price range. The 10th result that came up was a "2007 Redline Conquest Pro." Not expecting anything, I clicked on the ad and as I started reading the description, things started clicking. I skipped down to the pictures at the bottom of the ad, and there was my bicycle. My same bicycle, without a doubt. Same rack, fenders, water bottle cage, clipless pedals, and tail light--all aftermarket add-ons. Cue adrenaline.

I called the UW nonemergency number and spoke with the dispatcher who forwarded me to my detective's voicemail. I left him a message and followed it up with a rather excited email begging him to call me ASAP. I didn't email the poster right away because the detective told me that if I ever found my bike online or in person, I had to call the police, and they had to be the ones to make contact.

I have no idea how I fell asleep that night. I woke up the next morning and spent most of the next hour willing my cell phone to ring. Finally, at 8:30, it did! The detective called me back and more or less said there was nothing he could do since it was in Oregon. He said if I could get a name, phone number, and address he could make contact with Portland and work with them to get it back, but they probably wouldn't bite unless I had a serial number or could define some feature specific to my bike like a scratch. So we agreed I'd email the guy and try to get more information about the bike and hopefully better photos. I sent an email from an old email address that didn't have my name in it and wasn't from a UW domain, and headed to work.

It was a long day at work. I was checking my email pretty much constantly. I also called the Portland Police (both Maine and Oregon--oops). While the ones in Maine were friendly, the ones in Portland wouldn't give me the time of day. They said if I had a time and a place where I knew the guy was going to be with the bike, they'd send a patrol car down. They weren't interested in the Craigslist ad or pictures or pretty much anything. They also didn't believe me that it was my bike.

Now on my own and depending on the guy to make contact, I asked my labmate, Alex, to send another email from a non-identifying email address, and try to appeal to the rougher side of our Craigslist friend. He did a wonderful job and could no doubt commune with the criminal element of Portland if he so chose. Another labmate found two other ads that the same seller posted in two cities outside Portland based on the email address he gave in the ad (howlmike@hotmail.com). I was still shaking this whole time, by the way.

Around 4:30, Alex got an email back. It was from a different email address, pinkfloydboy@hotmail.com. The name on the email was [Seller's Name], but he signed the message Chris. We figured they were all fake names. He wouldn't give a phone number as he "didn't have a mobile phone" but wanted Alex's to arrange a time to buy the bike. After some deliberating and plotting, he emailed back asking to see the bike tomorrow, Saturday afternoon. Our plan was to drive down to Portland in the morning and meet the guy and for me to buy Alex lots of beer in return. Around 5:00, Alex got an email back that said someone was looking at the bike, and he'd email back at 8 if it was still available. Summer, a friend from my grad program, sent me a message at about the same time saying she just got an email from him too that he was meeting with a potential buyer at 8. I finally got an email back too which said he didn't have any high-res pictures and as long as the ad was up on Craigslist, the bike was still available. With everyone standing around my cubicle and Summer sending about 5 messages a second to me, she and I decided she would email the guy, offer him an extra $50, and ask him to wait 'til 8:30, and we would start driving to Portland.

Heart racing, I ran to the bus and headed home to get my car. It was the longest bus ride EVER. Actually, it was longer than usual due to a rather crude woman on a very large wheelchair needing to get on the bus. But that is neither here nor there. Summer called me to let me know the guy had agreed to wait 'til 8:30, so we were good to go, and he sent her a location: the Wal-Mart parking lot at 82nd and Holgate. As a side note, if anyone ever offers to sell you a bike in a Wal-Mart parking lot, bring the cops with you, because it's probably stolen. She also realized that the email address she used had her real name on it, and if the guy cared to google the name or the email address, he would figure out very quickly that she was a grad student at UW. Scared he'd be covering his bases, we also had Alex email him back with a similar offer for more money for a later pickup and give him my cell phone number.

I ran all the way home from the bus stop, grabbed a bottle of water and a box of crackers, waved goodbye to my guinea pigs, and headed to pick Summer up. It was 5:45 and we needed to meet our seller at 8:30. According to google, the trip should take 2 1/2 hours. It was going to be close, but we should be able to make it. As soon as we were on the road, Summer called my new buddies at the non-emergency Portland Police station. We had a time and a location. The dispatcher said she couldn't schedule a car to come out and meet us. Rather, we had to get to a safe location a block away and call from there. Disgusted with law enforcement, we decided to call when we got there, but we were going in to buy the bike regardless of whether the stupid police felt like giving us the time of day.

As we ran into stop-and-go traffic in Tacoma, Olympia, Fife, and in the middle of nowhere due to three separate car accidents, we began to realize 8:30 probably wasn't going to happen. We started thinking of people in Portland we could ask to go in our place to identify the bike and call the cops from a block away. Summer came up with her mom's cousin who she saw a few years ago when she came down to Portland with her grandmother for a Bar Mitzvah. She called her grandmother to get her second-cousin's (we'll just say aunt's) phone number. She called and talked to her uncle, and explained the situation. He was sympathetic, but wanted to make sure the police would be ok with someone else picking up the bike, and wanted to get advice from his brother who was a retired Portland cop. Summer called the dispatcher and explained our situation. The dispatcher FINALLY agreed to connect us with an officer. Summer called her uncle back and told him we had an officer, and he gave us his brother's number to call and ask for advice. His brother was very chatty and told us to call 911 once we got there for faster service and a few other tips.

After an anxious half an hour, it was pushing 7:30, we were still 100 miles away, and the officer hadn't called us back. Summer called dispatch again, reexplained our story, and found out that the officer was busy taking someone who robbed a Wal-Mart into custody (she didn't ask which Wal-Mart...), but would call us back as soon as possible. Eventually, Officer Wall called us back. He agreed to meet with someone else who went in our place, and we even painstakingly convinced him to go to the parking lot without anyone and see if the guy showed up with the bike, and we gave him a description and the serial number. He said he'd go but if he got a call, he'd have to take it. Summer called her family back, and her aunt talked to her. She said she wasn't comfortable meeting some guy in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with or without police. She did, however, offer us a bed if we needed to stay overnight in Portland. Fair enough. We then tried the brother ex-cop who told us he probably wasn't our best bet either as he was the face of the Portland Police for over 10 years before he retired. Fair enough. Summer called a friend back home and had him send another email to the guy, telling him we were going to be late and offer him another $50 to wait.

So at 8:00, 60 miles out of Oregon, our only hope was that Officer Wall wouldn't get a better offer.

We finally reached the Wal-Mart parking lot around 9:15, my adrenal gland wheezing. We drove around and saw no one that looked like an impatient sketchball trying to off a stolen bike.

We got to Summer's aunt and uncle's around 9:45. Our new plan was to hope the guy didn't sell it and was greedy enough to wait for our offer of an extra $100 until the next day. Summer and I both emailed him (an appropriate length of time apart) asking to see the bike tomorrow. We spent the short rest of the night telling our story and catching up (more Summer than me) with Summer's relatives. My heart rate finally returned to normal for the first time in 20 hours.

We got up at 8 the next morning and back onto the internet. Apparently Summer is into creating personas, so she had made up two more fake email addresses while I was sleeping and emailed the guy again, since all three ads were still up. She also hit google. We had two email addresses and two names for the guy. We found one email address associated with two other craigslist bike sales and a $2000 saxophone. It was also associated with two phone numbers. According to whitepages.com reverse lookup, one was out of Salem, OR, and the other was out of Beaverton, OR, the next town over. We spent all morning and into the afternoon hitting refresh on our emails and the three ads, going to a cafe (that had wireless) for lunch, playing Scrabble (I actually got the hands TIIIIII and AAAIIII and still beat Summer), and googling. Around 3, two of the postings were deleted and we still had no email back from him.

We decided to go to the police with what we'd found on the internet about this guy and see if there was anything they could do for us. We started with the Beaverton Police since one of the phone numbers that was associated with his email address was from there. I called the non-emergency number, and I evenutally convinced the dispatcher to get an officer to take my report. After more waiting, Officer Corning called me back. I told him what we had, and he was interested in the Beaverton phone number and I also suggested he run the serial number that was listed in the saxophone ad associated with that phone number. He went back to his precinct to run the numbers against his bad-guy database and stolen-stuff database, respectively, and called me back. He reported that the number was not associated with anyone in the database, and he didn't have access to any other kinds of records that could tell him whose it was. The serial number on the sax also wasn't in the stolen-stuff database. He told me he'd love to help, but since the guy said in his ad he was from SE Portland and because the rendezvous was in Portland, I'd have to deal with the Portland Police. It was refreshing to talk to someone in law enforcement who was actually helpful, but I was stuck again.

So....next I called my favorite non-emergency Portland Police number. After I explained my story for the upteenth time, the dispatcher informed me that she could do nothing since the case was originally filed with the UW Police. So she needed them to file a followup and "telatype" it over to Portland. So I called UW non-emergency dispach. The woman there told me that since I had told my detective about the craigslist ad, there would have been a followup already filed (which is good since he doesn't work weekends) and she had no idea what telatype was. I pleaded with her, and eventually she connected me to the Sergent on duty. I again explained my story to the Sergent and convinced her to call the Portland Police and give them the information about my case. She agreed and assigned me the task of emailing my detective to update him on the situation.

In the mean time, Summer and I decided to do a little crank calling. Since we gave the guy both of our cell phone numbers in emails the last night, we figured out how to use *67 on cell phones--that's the one that blocks caller id--and called both the numbers. We were hoping to get a voicemail where it would give the guy's name. The Beaverton number rang for a while then went to a mailbox with a woman's voice recorded saying the number, but not a name. The second number rang for a while, then a dude picked up. We hung up on him. Interesting, but not terribly useful. We joked about things we could say to him. My idea was to invite him out for drinks and pretend to be answering some internet dating ad. This made us think of checking the Portland personals on Craigslist. We searched for his two email addresses and his name, "[Seller's First Name]." [Seller's First Name] came up with one ad posted on Thursday for a guy with a troubled past, looking for a good Christian lady to straighten him out. Summer decided to create another fake email address and invite him out to drinks, determined to seduce him into confession, if it was the right guy. Uh.....

About half an hour later, the UW Sergent got back to me and told me that she talked to a Communications Officer (I eventually got out of her that that is a fancy name for dispatcher) who took the info about the case but couldn't do anything without the address I was currently staying at in Portland. (?!) So, guess who I called again? Yep, Portland Dispatch. I can't tell you how many times Summer and I called them, and not a single time did the person on the other end of the phone have any prior knowledge of our story. So there's either a huge bank of dispatchers in Portland, or there's one who has a problem with short-term memory loss. Anyway, I reexplained my story, and the woman said she'd have an officer call me. Incidentally, she never asked for my address.

Summer and I started making plans to leave for Seattle since we figured phones worked just as well up there. I got a call back from Officer Sutton who took all the information I could give her: all the names, all the email addresses, the phone numbers, my case number, my bike's serial number. I asked if there was anything she could do to try and track this guy down. She said she'd check with the detectives and see what they thought she should do.

As Summer's aunt started preparing dinner to send us off, Summer got an email back from [Seller's First Name]. We looked at his MySpace page and based on the last name, decided it probably wasn't our guy. Oh well. Would have made a good story if it was.

I got a call back from Officer Sutton who told us she'd be sending an officer to the house to take my information. One of the names I gave her, [Seller's Name], was in their bad-guy database, and they wanted to catch him. I almost fell off my chair.

Officer Bledsoe showed up around 8. He looked at all of the information we had: my pictures of the bike, Summer's google searches, the saxophone ad, the Craigslist ads, my case number and serial number, everything. I convinced him it was my bike, which I'm getting pretty good at at this point. He had permission from his supervisor to try to buy my bike from the guy. There was plainclothes officer ready, and they were going to call the phone number we gave him and set up a buy. I was going to get to go to id the bike and wear a bulletproof vest and everything! He took all the info back out to his car, and came back about 15 minutes later. He had a female officer call the number as "Michelle" and offer to buy the bike tonight. Unfortunately, the guy on the other end said he sold it last night. Officer Bledsoe said we were pretty much out of luck. He was planning to go stop at the address he had on file for [Seller's Name], peek in the windows, and knock on the door to let him know the officer had his eye on him...if he still lived there.

So Summer and I headed back to Seattle around 10 sans bike. I got back around 1:30, and my guinea pigs were VERY happy to see me. The serial number is in the national stolen-stuff database, and there are police reports both at UW and in Portland. If anyone ever gets stopped by the police on my bike, they'll run the serial number and I'll get it back. It's also another nail in the proverbial coffin for [Seller's Name]. If you put enough nails in the coffin, eventually the lid stays down, as my Dad says.

I've posted a Craigslist ad in Portland about how someone just bought a stolen bike, which maybe the person who bought it will see and feel compelled to respond to. I'm also going to try and get word out around Portland about it. If I've learned anything this weekend, it's that you need to be persistent and your own advocate. And that I hate dispatchers. And I have really great friends.

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