One Saturday in July, Chelsea brought her kids to come swimming. We had a great time with them. Rachel especially loved getting to play with Amber.
After the pool, we went to eat at Costa Vida, close to the freeway, for dinner before Chelsea headed home.
While we were at the pool, somebody pulled up in their car right next to where Gabe had left his bike on the sidewalk by our side gate. Just as casually as can be, the man got out of his car, picked up Gabe's bike, and drove off with it. When Gabe couldn't find his bike a couple of days later, Brian said, mostly jokingly, "Someone probably stole it since you didn't put it away like you were supposed to." But then, Brian decided to check our cameras, and we were all shocked to find that someone had indeed stolen the bike. I mean, what kind of jerk steals a little kids' bike.
While we were at the pool, somebody pulled up in their car right next to where Gabe had left his bike on the sidewalk by our side gate. Just as casually as can be, the man got out of his car, picked up Gabe's bike, and drove off with it. When Gabe couldn't find his bike a couple of days later, Brian said, mostly jokingly, "Someone probably stole it since you didn't put it away like you were supposed to." But then, Brian decided to check our cameras, and we were all shocked to find that someone had indeed stolen the bike. I mean, what kind of jerk steals a little kids' bike.
We checked KSL in the days following, but we never saw the bike listed--possibly because we weren't super diligent about checking, and we didn't notice it had been stolen until a few days later. We figured there was no way we could ever find the guy who stole it. My mom said that we still should report it since it might help someone else in the future. A couple of weeks later when the police came to investigate our neighbor's house when her house alarm went off, we decided to ask them what we should do.
We ended up working with a detective. We sent him the video footage from our side yard camera, and amazingly, they caught the guy! They were able to identify the car from our footage and other traffic cameras around the area, and the detective happened to see the car when he was driving around town one day. He pulled the man over for a routine traffic stop and then asked about the bike. The man immediately lawyered up, which makes us all think that he's been stealing other things. A $200 bike was probably not worth the lawyer fees, and it would have been a fine and a misdemeanor at worst. We're still waiting for the case to go to court (as of February 6, 2024), and we aren't expecting to get any kind of compensation for Gabe's bike, but hopefully we were able to prevent someone else from having their bike stolen. Or something even more valuable.
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