Posts
558
Joined
4/1/2008
Location
San Diego, CA, USA
Edited Date/Time
10/12/2019 10:44am
We always see posts for stolen bikes, but rarely do we hear about them ever being found. Besides catching the thief red-handed, do most people find them for sale on Craigslist or get a call from the Police that it was found?
The police went and found my bike along with a meth lab.
After filing a police report, we got lucky and an off duty officer happened to see it in a park laying on the ground about a week later. Several people were near the bike but all claimed it was already there when they got to the park.
The off duty officer then called me and waited for me as I had to leave work, go get my truck and pick up the bike. Basically, he waited a little over an hour for me to get to where the bike was located to pick it up. Pretty cool of him to do that on his day off.
87 CR 125 stolen when I was 18. I got call from a friend saying he had my bike. He went to a family BBQ and recognized my bike parked on the side of the garage. Turns out the thief said he bought it and asked to park it at a relatives house. About a year later the thief got killed pulling the same shit. Stealing. That's Karma for ya.
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So I live in a small town, in fact, I went to high school with the local chief of police, and he lives right down the road from me. My wife calls him and he just happens to be close by, so he and another officer come right over. I explain what happened, and he asks me if I have a picture of the bike, and I can't remember if or where the picture would be, but I had the owners manual in my shop, so I showed him the picture of the bike on the cover. He said without hesitation, "I have that bike in my impound lot". I said, "no shit, I don't believe it."
So he asks me to follow him to the impound lot. When we get there, there is a CRF propped against the fence, but it doesn't look like my bike. I started walking up to it and I said, "Kent, that ain't it" he tells me to hold on until I get a closer look at it. Lo and behold, it was my CRF. The graphics had all been pulled off of it, but everything else told me that it was my (my son's) bike.
They had chased a guy riding in on the street, and the guy ditched it....in a ditch,,,and took off on foot. So they took it back to the impound lot. It apparently had been missing about a week, but I never noticed it missing. I got it back, restored it, and sold it a month later.
I come out one morning and its gone. Immediately I called the police, who scuffed me off with "Call back in 30 minutes when the office opens".
Then 5 minutes later the police officer calls me and says "We've had a report of a yellow MX bike in the parkinghouse at the mall".
It was 300 meters away, so I run there and find my bike covered in piss and beer.
Since I knew a good amount of people around here, I had someone put me in the right area to look as they said they heard someone on a bike around 6am. It had just rained the previous evening and we were able to find a set of tracks that we were sure were mine (I was running Michelin s12s). We followed them into a swamp where my bike sat underneath a bunch of old rotted wood that had been dumped back there.
So there I sat hiding with a piece of pressure treated 2x4 and waited no longer than 20 mins before two guys came stomping thru the woods. As soon as one of them touched it I let it rain on them. After a thorough shakedown of these two I was able to get an address of where my daughters bike was (hers being stolen really pissed me off). It was about 1/2 a mile from my house in someone's back yard.
I show up to the house to find a car full of dope heads sleeping. I proceeded to let them know I knew what they were doing and what was going on and if they didnt give me info on who took it the authorities would be involved. They were coherent enough now to show me texts from the first shitbag I dealt with saying he put the bike behind his house and to not say anything. Sure enough the bike was there and those texts messages were shared with the authorities to implicate the thief.
I cannot believe how lucky I was and thanks to my father and both of our persistence we got both back. I am leaving some of the finer details out but yeah, we were lucky and weren't taking no for an answer.
I come Home from work and immediately notice the garage is open and that the Z 50 is gone. I called the police which basically was a waste of time and filed a report.
Next I drove around to every motorcycle shop within 20 miles and went to see the service manager and parts manager in each shop. I explain my Z 50 was stolen and that if anyone comes in looking for parts for a Z 50 or needs service for someone to please contact me.
The very next week the local shop closest to me calls my very close friends who owns a shop in the next town over telling them that they have a Z 50 and ask if I am legit.
Well, I meet the police at the shop and identify the bike (I had no papers) and the police and owner go huddle up.
The officer said I can have my bike back, but I cannot press charges. WTF. Turns out the kid who stole it was the Mayor’s son. He claims he bought from “unknown” kids.
He brought it for service as he could not keep it running. The fool topped off the gas tank using my can of Premix. He kept fouling the plug.
Came home from the club one night very sloshed, bike wasn’t by back door, gone.
Next afternoon I was sitting in the house kind of down and heard a braap, Braap way in the distance.
I hopped in my 1972 LTD Landau following the noise. There it was going down the old tracks by the highway.
Cut them off Frank Cannon style, a yelled at two teenagers to get the F off the bike.
They handed it to me. Locked my car up, rode the bike home, put it in the basement and sold it a week later.
I never wanted that to happen again. I had too big of a student loan to insure it, plus I was busy sowing oats😂.
In 2015 my brother received a phone call from the police and gave them my contact info.
They found this bike about 3 hours from where I live, with the same graphics, seat cover, and blue fork guards they had put on the bike when they bought it... My Acerbis bars too.
Don't know when it was stolen, or if they still owned the bike but, pretty trippy nonetheless.
Pit Row
He filed a police report and nothing came of it. Bike was very distinct because we had put a full set of plastics and graphics I got from Kevin Windham on it, from 99.
Maybe a year or so later he started dating this girl. He went to pick her up one day and she made mention that her neighbor had a bike he was trying to sell. For some reason, he decided to go check out the bike. They walked over and talked to the guy. Sure enough, dude rolls the bike out and it's his missing bike.
He happened to have the title in his truck in hopes that he'd run across it one day. Showed the guy the title and told him that he was calling the cops. Guy was really cool about it and understood, he had bought it off of someone else.
Just pure luck and fate on that one. The bike still had race gas in the tank, it hadn't been ridden more than a couple of rips down the street. It was in the same condition as when it was stolen.
The thief/s lifted the thing up and over all of the junk strapped on the side of the car and walked off with it, there's a dry riverbed within about a kilometre that they pushed it to before starting the thing. This riverbed runs all the way through town and out into the outer suburbs where people own acreage blocks.
Anyway, a family friend who lives on one of those blocks was standing in his backyard (which faces this riverbed, lots of people ride straight out from their house into the river) having a cup of coffee at daybreak. He said he could hear the sound of a little 150 having its neck wrung and thought it was a bit too early for anyone to be out riding.
So the family friend peered over the back fence, and sure enough, there's a fuckwit with his cap on backwards wedging my 150 through the riverbed. He recognised my bike, so he rallied his son and his son in law who were both big nasty fellas, they jumped in a car and set off after the thief. After a chase, he got scared and bailed off the thing and scampered off into the bush. Fortunately for him, those big fellas didn't get their hands on him and fortunately for me, I got my bike back
Neither have been recovered , this Yamaha was one the Other was a KX250F.
My guess is this is guys that came from another state
With a box truck just to do this and are now traveling to
Unsuspecting Areas where this is uncommon
And so far getting away with it , so Beware
, get Picture of their Drivers license, or ?
I never got it back.
Taken from the Garage when nobody was home
I think using garage door opener from an unlocked car in the driveway, (normally a very low crime area where people dont lock their cars)
I still wonder every time I see a 1991 KX125 for sale if it could be it, but what could you even do after 25 years ?
I'm guessing statute of limitations is up so even if you saw it you couldn't take it back.
1 1/2 years later the cops called with good news the found my bike, it was in the same condition when it was stolen.
They had found a partial print on a cigarette packet wrapper in a stolen car, which led them to a drug house that led to another prick that had my bike in a house full of stolen property.
I washed, serviced, checked it over and continued to enjoy it.
Post a reply to: Has anyone ever recovered their stolen bike? If so, how was it found?