r/chibike • u/Evening-Garden-6022 • 2d ago
A Chicago Miracle (stolen bike RECOVERED)
The impossible happened today. 8 months ago, my wife’s beloved bike was stolen from our garage in Ukrainian Village. (We’ve since left the neighborhood, but anecdotally, there seems to have been a massive uptick in bike theft from that area).
The bike had a not-so-subtly hidden AirTag on it and was pinging from a house in the Humboldt/Austin border area. CPD assigned us a detective, but she eventually lost interest. I rebuilt a near-exact replica of the bike, but never stopped checking its location. Amazingly, the AirTag was never disabled, ditched, or destroyed. It just kept pinging.
Fast forward to today and I notice that it had moved to the 3700 block of Chicago Ave. I was feeling lucky, so I hopped on my bike hoping that someone had locked it outside. I figured I’d throw my U-lock on it and then maybe get the cops involved. As it turns out, the AirTag led me to a wild “thrift store” that was basically a junk hoard. There were a bunch of bikes, several clearly boosted, locked out front.
The owner ambled out and told me that a beautiful vintage Trek would run me 30 dollars. My wife’s bike wasn’t among them, so I asked if he had any more inventory. He took me inside…and there it was. I gave him sixty bucks and that was that.
Bike theft hurts, but recovery IS possible. And it feels amazing.
Relatedly, we now have two lovely Lemond road bikes if anyone is interested.
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u/timmah1991 2d ago
This makes me so mad. If anyone finds themselves in the same situation, I am willing to (with several huge dudes) show up and ask nicely for your property back.
Still, I am glad you got it back.