Success!!!
Part 1
This story starts about three weeks ago, May 25th to be exact. I live in midtown Sacramento and had ridden my bike over to Sutter Middle School in the evening to shoot some hoops and play basketball. I've got a Windsor Hour that I bought a few years ago not knowing much about bikes. In the interim, I've swapped out basically everything but the headset and cranks, as well as doing a custom gray paint job. I taught myself a lot in the process and came to really enjoy the bike.
Anyways, I'm playing a full-court game and have left my bike, backpack, helmet, etc. on a picnic table not twenty feet from the court. I've been playing basketball at this school for over a year and have never had much reason to be suspicious of my surroundings. I sometimes noticed teenagers smoking weed in the corners but never any serious offenses.
Game ends, walk 20 ft. back to picnic table, backpack and stuff is there, bike is gone. I look around, ask anyone I'd played with if they saw anything, get no answers. I run to the front of the school to see if the thief is just getting away. I don't see my bike at all but there is a shady looking guy standing between two cars in the parking lot. I ask him quickly if he saw anybody riding a gray bike and he says he saw some kid take it up the street. This strikes me as odd and suspicious but I run up the street anyways and of course don't see or find anything. I come back to the parking lot and the same guy is just getting into the passenger side of an SUV and trying to leave quickly. I do a quick glance in the back of his car but don't see any tell-tale bike parts like wheels or handlebars sticking up. The car takes off.
Only after the guy is gone do I walk between the cars where I saw him standing and see a smashed out window. It turns out the car belongs to a janitor working at the school and a backpack and some other personal belongings were stolen. I'm now bummed and pissed because I spoke to the guy face to face that I think stole my bike. But I still can't be sure it was him because it didn't actually look like my bike was in the car when he took off.
Walk two miles home, file police report online, scour craigslist over the next few days to see if the thief posts the bike for sale, nothing turns up.
Part II
A few weeks go by and I'm back to playing basketball at the same school. I now have to drive..annoying. I'd been back a few times before and spoke to the janitor whose car was broken into. He ended up finding some of this things strewn on the road after the thieves tossed them but he didn't have the money to repair his smashed window yet. Every time I'm there I take a close look at all the bikes in the area but haven't seen mine. I know the chances of ever seeing my bike again are incredibly small, but I still have this feeling that if I am to find it, it'll be at the school where it was stolen. I'd seen teenagers on fixed gears hanging out in the area before, doing skids and whatnot because the pavement there is really smooth.
So I shoot hoops for about ten minutes then go sit on the very picnic table that my bike was stolen from to wait to get in a game. I look over at two kids who just arrived on bikes. Check out the first one..nope. Second bike..I think to myself: that chainring looks familiar, not many people have a rocket ring, gray paint, silver Mavic wheels, I'm thinking no f-ing way!! The kid gets off the bike and I spot my black Selle Italia Turbo saddle. That's it, that's my bike!
My blood instantly starts pounding and I walk right up to the kid. He's a tall, skinny mexican looking guy of about 16 or 17. I grab the headset, jerk the bike away from him and demand he tell me where he got the bike. The conversation goes something like this:
Me: where did you get this bike?
Thief: city bike works in midtown. (a reputable if overpriced lbs).
Me: this bike was stolen from that picnic table right there about three weeks ago. where did you get this bike? I bought these Mavic wheels, that saddle, those pedals, that's a custom paint job, and there was a red vans sticker under where you covered it up with that black sticker.
Thief: uh..well a friend sold it to me. he said he bought it in midtown.
Me: there is a police report filed for this bike. what's your name?
Thief: um..i just don't want to get in any trouble. just let me take the stuff off it and you can take it.
Me: You must be real stupid for riding this bike back to where you stole it from.
The thief starts pulling off spoke cards, nog lights, and other silly accoutrements he had fashioned on my bike. It struck me how scared and nervous he must have been because instead of unclasping the nog lights, he just pulled at them until the rubber ripped, ruining them. I didn't say much more and started wheeling the bike away. In a parting shot, I pulled off a reflector that he had attached to the seat post and chucked it at him as I was walking away. Loaded my bike into my car, drove it home, didn't even get to play basketball.
In the three weeks or so that this piece of crap had my bike, he put a number of scratches in the paint, put a rip in the back of the saddle, and swapped out the pursuit bars I had for a pair of goofy risers. I'm still pissed when I think about this kid stealing my bike literally from right under my nose. I'll obviously always take my lock in the future but this was one of the cases where I was right there and he still snatched it. I guess it just turned out to be a weird coincidence that while my bike was being stolen, some other lowlifes were breaking into cars in the parking lot..ended up being totally unrelated.
In retrospect I'm thinking I could have done more to try to punish this kid..call the cops or something. But the whole confrontation was over in less than 90 seconds..he folded pretty quickly when I mentioned the police report and pointed out obvious things I knew about my bike. Oh well..at least I've got my bike back!!! Long post, I know. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.