How Boulder’s Twitterati Got My Bike Back

Saturday my bike was stolen. Monday afternoon I got it back. Here’s how it went down, and how Boulder’s Twitterati got it back.

Saturday morning I noticed my bike was gone. I lock it to a lock latch that was drilled into brick, and a jerk had pulled the lock out of the brick. I was a special kind of livid reserved for people who have a 100 percent Irish temperament. What made me so angry is that he took my locked bike, which was next to THREE unlocked bikes. And while my bike is nice, so was one of the other bikes.

I told my roommate, Rachel (@wittytwit), and she told me our office neighbors saw the theft go down and took a picture of the thief while they were in the midst of moving. Our amazing next door neighbor, Amy, helped me track down the neighbors with the photo, and she sent it to me early Monday morning. I had a blog post geared up and ready to go, dropped in the picture and asked, “Have you seen this bike thief?” I posted it at 10:45 am, posted it to Twitter and Facebook.

From there, #Boulder Twitter absolutely blew it up. Boulder is a community that watches your back for you, and is extremely helpful. Plus, Boulder is full of avid bicycle lovers and bike thievery runs rapid in our town that typically has few crimes. Within hours, I had 138 people tweet about the thieves, 24 people share it on Facebook and nearly 900 views on my blog post.

Boulder was full of helpful information, so by the time I went to the police station @WendiTV told me he was known as Dready Dave, @eatullis thought she had seen him on the bike path with a different bike, @bikestohikes had seen him ON my bike at Baseline Liquor, @CDR16 let me know he had seen him multiple times on Pearl St. previously and @thecupboulder spotted him on the bike path under the bridge on 9th. I was armed with knowledge due to Twitter.

By 3 pm Monday, I had a suspect with a trail by the time I filed my police report. Having a suspect changed how they filed my police report. Plus, the officer filing my report told me she had actually seen him riding my bike at LiquorMart. She let me know if I saw him WITH my bike to call 911 but not to confront him. People were asking if 911 was appropriate for a bike theft. Not to report it, but only if the perp was seen with your stolen goods.

I got to my desk by 4 pm and saw that 2 minutes earlier @DanPierson tweeted that he had seen the suspect riding my bike, called 911 and needed backup.

I told Dan not to confront him. Talked to some of my co-workers at Trada, and Trada’s account management team decided they would go with me (@fasterstill, @dantisser, @brandonhess) as well as Trada’s CEO Niel Robertson (@nielr1) and our head of community (@nadaalami). My co-workers are incredible, and I’m lucky they were going to roll out with me in a moment’s notice. Mount up.

We arrived at LiquorMart but @danpierson was no longer in pursuit. He was staying put because the man had left behind his blanket pictured here, and Dan thought he would come back. As two cars of my Trada co-workers rolled up to LiquorMart, we saw a man that looked like my picture from earlier but we weren’t sure. He didn’t have the bike, but he DID have the dreads, the hoodie and the Nike sneakers. He was with a female. So we called Dan to get more details, and he said that he had been with a women as well. We had our guy so we followed him at a distance while we called the cops. While speaking to 911, we flagged down a cop car. In the meanwhile, @danpierson and his backup of @andrewhyde came and joined us. They nabbed the suspect that Trada’s account management team had circled up on and his girlfriend led us to where they had stashed the bike. Justice service.

So to summarize, within six hours, we found the suspect thanks to @danpierson and all of Boulder’s twittering. Within seven hours, we had my bike back. A huge thank you to every single person who tweeted, posted on Facebook and commented on my blog. And an extra huge thanks to @danpierson, @andrewhyde, @fasterstill, @brandonhess, @dantisser, @nadaalami and @nielr1 for literally having my back. On a special note, Dan is new to town and looking for a biz dev/sales position, preferably at an early-stage startup. Please follow him on Twitter, welcome this awesome new citizen to our town and take him out for coffee.

I have my bike back and the thief upgraded it to include a bell and cup holder. If you are missing either of those items from your bike, please let me know. And if you haven’t registered your bike with Boulder, PLEASE do so.

Cheers to Boulder (and Twitter). I’m so glad I live here.