If it were a sunny day, Fei Ye would probably ride a bike.
Check that – would want to ride his bike.
His doctor told him not to ride a bike until his spleen heals.
That would be the spleen he suffered from a fall off his Trek mountain bike while riding in Stanley Park in mid-November. Ye ended up in St. Paul’s Hospital for three days before being discharged.
The good news is that the 52-year-old semi-retired businessman did not need surgery.
The bad news is that when he left the hospital to look for his bike, which paramedics locked up for him near St. Paul’s main entrance, it was gone.
His reaction?
“I was a little upset, but then I thought someone needed it more than I did,” the Point Gray resident said. “Besides, maybe someone told me to stop riding my bike, I don’t know.”
“An Early Christmas Present”
Until last Wednesday, Ye believed he would never see his trek again. He paid about $800 for the bike last year and bought it to continue the exercise his regular swimming stopped him from getting; Catching COVID-19 poolside was a real concern for him.
They didn’t bother to report the stolen bike to the police. However, he has checked with his insurance company for a replacement; His deductible expense would be $1,000, a sum that put him off looking for another bike.
Then Vancouver Police Const. Laura Coburn called. At first, Ye suspected it was a scam. He then heard Coburn share more details about his bike and that it was recovered by officers who toured a single-occupancy hotel in Gastown.
“It’s like an early Christmas present and I’m so happy my bike was found,” he said this week, noting he was reunited with his Trek after police handed it over to him on December 15.
Coburn traced the bike back to Ye after matching the serial number, make and model with Trek, who told her it was purchased from West Point Cycles on West 10th Avenue. An employee registered the bike before Ye left the store on it last year.
West Point employees provided Coburn with Yes’s contact information, leading to a happy ending.
But these types of endings don’t happen as often as police would like, largely because owners don’t take the simple steps to register their bikes upon purchase. You were lucky the bike shop did that for him, but not every bike shop does.
From January to November this year, 2,131 bicycles were reported to the police as stolen. There were 2,049 bikes in 2020 and 2,742 in 2019, according to Vancouver Police Department data.
The number of stolen bikes that have not been reported to police is difficult to quantify, but investigators suspect it is significant.
Police recommend that bike owners register a profile on Project529.com, complete with serial number, value, description, make, model, and photo of you and your bike. Also keep a receipt. Also, use a good lock to prevent it from being stolen in the first place.
At the very least, Coburn said, if an owner chooses not to register with Project529.com, a police-approved registry to assist in the return of stolen bikes, they should write down their bike’s serial number and keep a photo of themselves with the bike to owner.
“If everyone would stick to it, we could just about let the bikes run fast [through Project529] and get them out of here,” she said, adding that it’s also important for owners to report their bikes stolen.
Otherwise, the chances of returning a stolen bike to an owner are slim, as evidenced by the 400 at the Vancouver Police Department Storage Building, where Coburn is working with a team to return bikes and other stolen property to citizens.
Most bikes are stored on some sort of dry-cleaning conveyor belt that runs up the side of a storage wall and up into the ceiling.
Mountain bikes, road bikes, BMX bikes, kids’ bikes, and electric bikes are all on display in an aisle similar to a Costco store, with quality ranging from low to high-end, including a $3,600 red Giant Anthem mountain bike.
“Never thought he’d see his bike again”
The Giant was among nine stolen bikes that police recovered from a rooftop “hideout” in Gastown on Nov. 22. The owner reported his stolen bike to Surrey RCMP on November 8, but erroneously gave the wrong serial number; it was off by one digit.
Meanwhile, the thief created a fraudulent profile on Project529.com with the correct serial number to report the giant’s theft. Project529.com employees noticed that there were multiple profiles for stolen bikes, likely created by the same person.
“He just posted a picture of it on the street and left [his profile] blank and then said ‘stolen’ hoping the police would actually return it to him,” Coburn said, noting that the investigation is still ongoing.
In the end, police contacted Giant Canada with the serial number, and an employee told Coburn that the bike was purchased from a store in Jasper, Alta, in 2018. A call to the Jasper Sports Store secured the owner’s contact information.
“He’s thrilled because he never thought he’d see his bike again,” she said, noting that the owner lives in Victoria and plans to travel to Vancouver for the holidays to pick up his bike.
If police cannot find an owner within 90 days, the bike will be auctioned off, with proceeds going to a City of Vancouver general tax fund.
When asked what the resolution or response rate is, Insp. Mark Wooldridge, who oversees real estate and forensic storage services, was candid: “It’s not very good, it’s frustratingly low.”
At the same time, since September, police have returned 35 stolen bikes valued at $34,000 to their rightful owners. In recent months, other teams of officers have recovered bikes totaling more than $100,000 from Facebook Marketplace and other online sales platforms.
Police continue to operate a bait bike program and have arrested 23 people since April.
Wooldridge pointed out that police aren’t just after thieves who steal high-end bikes.
“We treat every incoming bike equally [to the property office]whether it’s a kids’ bike that’s $100 at Walmart, or a $3,000 Trek bike, or a $6,000 mountain bike,” said Wooldridge, who credited Const. Tammy Berzins for her early work in outreach to the cycling community to return bikes to their owners.
“We make sure that the data is correct [serial number, make, model]so we have the best opportunity to give it back.”
“I was so moved”
Meanwhile, at home, Ye continues to recover from his accident, which happened after he hit a patch of wet leaves on the park’s main road.
A rain break brought him out that day.
“I was going to go to Richmond to buy something, but there was a sunny break and I just wanted to take advantage of it,” he said, noting that he’d worked his way up to 25 miles a day since buying the bike.
Ye wanted to publicly thank all the doctors and nurses at St. Paul’s Hospital and the people who came to his aid with his accident, including tourists and others, one of whom kept him warm with his jacket.
“And there was a doctor from Quebec,” he said. “He checked my pulse and my eyes and comforted me. I was so moved.”
His bike hasn’t been too badly damaged in the meantime and is now safe at his house.
When will he be back?
“The doctor told me I couldn’t exercise for three months.”
