Stolen bike recovered 1,000 miles from home...

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Stolen bike recovered 1,000 miles from home WCAX

Burlington, VT A bike that was reported stolen in Greenville, South Carolina, eight months ago was recently found in Vermont. No one is sure how it ended up in the Green Mountain State, but its owner is just happy it’s heading home.

The bike’s owner, Preston Spratt, said his hopes of getting the bike back were dwindling until he received a call from Vermont.

“At first I thought this was going to be a Western Union money request to get my bike back, but the perfect person found the bicycle,” Spratt said.

That person was Erik Thomsen from Colchester. Thomsen saw an odd marketplace post for a bike and decided to check it out.

“They said they had painted an apartment and traded the work for the bike,” Thomsen explained.

Thomsen says he believes the story to be genuine, and the person gladly handed the bike over. REI in Williston is now helping return it to Spratt in South Carolina.

“It was definitely the bicycle, complete to where the sticky mark where the police sticker I got here in Greenville had been removed,” Spratt said.

Thomsen found out the bike was stolen by looking up its serial number on Bike Index, a national bike registry.

Jon Copans with the Old Spokes Home says registering your bike in this database is one of the best things you can do. There is a Burlington database, but if the bike is found elsewhere, it doesn’t do much good.

“Bikes move around, so it would be helpful to have it in a location people around the country are looking at,” Copans explained.

In addition to that, Copans recommends taking other steps to keep it from getting stolen in the first place, like strong chains or U-locks.

“If you can bring a bike indoors that’s always the best option,” Copans continued.

Thomsen and Copans both say bikes are important in the Burlington community, adding that it’s great people have been looking out for each other, but also asking for community leaders to do more.

“You can kind of feel it in the community,” Thomsen said. “It’s like petty theft and bike theft and car thefts have been on the rise.”

“We have customers for whom bikes are essential transportation. It’s how they get to their job. It’s how they get to the doctor. It’s how they get their family around, so we think it’s pretty serious,” Copans said.

How the bike ended up in Vermont, we’ll never know.

“If that bike had eyes and ears, it could tell a hell of a story,” Thomsen said.

WCAX News reached out to the Burlington Police to see how many reports of bike thefts they’ve received this year. Acting Chief Jon Murad says that isn’t data they currently have accessible.

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