The stolen bike saga...

Tuesday morning, Keith went to the gym and then left his car at the Park & Ride.  He came home Tuesday evening and discovered that his car had been broken into.  He didn't notice anything missing until he got home & discovered that his garage door opener was missing.  In the process of re-programming the garage door, we discovered that his bike was missing.

Keith's not a big "stuff" person, I think this is the one and only item in the entire world that Keith loves, so of course, that's the only thing they stole...     

The rest of the week was spent on phone calls with the police and the insurance company.  On Wednesday night, we told Parker that a Police Officer was going to come over to our house.  Unfortunately, the police officer was delayed enough that Parker fell asleep in his chair waiting for him to show up.  We woke Parker up so he could see the Cop car, and the officer even turned the lights on for Parker.  P was pretty asleep/tired at the time, but I think he enjoyed it.

At this point we weren't expecting to ever see the bike again, but I kept checking Craigslist just-in-case.  Saturday morning, I found this ad:

No question, it was Keith's bike, so Keith started calling the police again, but by the end of the day on Saturday, it looked like nothing was going to happen.  I'm sure the police have bigger fish to fry, but this missing bike has been kind of all-consuming in this household this week.  So, Sunday morning, Keith decided to just buy the bike back.  They'd lowered the price from $460 to $405 (in one day), so we were afraid they'd find an actual buyer before the cops did anything.  It's offensive in principle to pay for something you owned outright a few days ago (and still do own, legally), but it would have cost us a lot more to buy it all new.

Fortunately, we have a friend who's a police officer (not in Seattle, but still willing to help).  So, Keith arranged to meet with the thief and Josh agreed to tag along.  They arranged to meet with the Seattle PD down the street before meeting with the "seller".  Everything takes longer than planned, so they spent a good half-hour hanging out just off Aurora, but eventually the SPD showed up and Keith texted the seller that he'd be at their meet-up spot shortly (it was originally a fast-food restaurant, but then the seller moved it to a near-by hotel ...creepy).

As soon as they showed up at the hotel, the seller came out with the bike and Josh was on the phone with the SPD, and within minutes the parking lot was filled with cops, and soon enough, Keith was on his way home with his beloved bike, none the worse for wear.  I think it's unlikely that anyone will be arrested for this, but we're very relieved to have the bike back safe & sound...and the summer has been saved.

A few things we've learned from this experience:

*Don't keep your registration in your glove box.  According to the law, you have to have it in your car, but there's nothing saying you can't hide it somewhere not so obvious.  And we'll be much more careful going forward that we don't leave anything with our address in the car.  We previously programmed our GPS to think that we live at Central Market, but it never occurred to us that they might look through all the random papers in the car for our address.

*Have a locked door between your garage & the house.  I'm sure that locked door saved us from a MUCH bigger theft & headache.

*Don't leave your garage door opener in the car at the Park & Ride.  I'm not sure I'll keep this one up, but it's probably a good idea for Keith.

*Check on Craigslist, you never know, they might be dumb enough to post it a few days after the robbery.

*Have a friend who's a Cop.  There's no way we would have gotten the SPD to take this seriously if Josh hadn't been with Keith.