No, I didn’t get a mobile phone back, and I’m not surprised by that. Like many millennials, I was dumbfounded by our digital culture.
We believed that possessions – mobile phones, houses, cars, computers – would hold value in the world outside of internet and the stores they were stamped into.
But that’s a lie. And I’ve started asking myself, ‘Why can’t I have it back?’.
Only last week, a North Carolina lawman was fired for using a stolen bicycle to chase a suspect. Another in Indiana was fired for riding a stolen car.
I have owned six stolen bikes. Each time, a day or two before the theft, I became convinced that the situation would be resolved. Each time, I talked myself out of not actually making contact with the thief. I now understand what the cop was up against: an adrenaline rush that made my body give in, either directly or by wiring its amygdalae (the brain’s “mood servers”). And for whatever reason, I could not talk myself out of it.
When I took the camera out of the bike, I couldn’t take it out. My dog, Aros, barked and scratched at me for getting rid of the camera, but I kept showing up at his doorstep and insisting that I could tell that my camera was stolen because he was lying down in the middle of the street looking for it.
The first time I tried to hand the camera to a police officer, he practically spit out the instructions to give it to him. Then he quickly pulled out his baton and handcuffed me, telling me that the bike thief had just been found, and that he would be calling a Toronto police officer as quickly as possible.
A Bosco mountain bike stolen from a downtown park was later recovered and will be returned to its rightful owner, on Wednesday. | Supplied
The camera actually led me to the boy who stole it. We drove to the place where the bike was recovered (after a jog through the alley), and his mother was there. The officer called us both to come into the office, and there, the mother was sobbing and yelling at the cops, as though they were to blame for her son’s decision to steal a bicycle. They asked her if her son had watched me and had heard my voice, and she pleaded that it was not her fault. One of the officers pulled the boy off the cell phone from where he had been hiding, and a Toronto cop left to check out that part of the neighbourhood.
That was the last time the bike was in the hands of a law enforcement officer.
It wasn’t long before, I was having trouble sleeping, telling myself that I couldn’t just sit there and watch a life be destroyed. I tried to text the owner, but because my phone had been stolen, it was making these eerie chirping noises. So I pulled out my sunglasses and hid my phone. Meanwhile, I locked the bike, put the camera on the ground and contacted the police.
The police called back saying that the camera had been scanned and their inquiries had been “unsuccessful”.
I left a message. I was skeptical at first, but then I thought, What if this was truly the owner’s bike, and not just a victim whose phone was stolen? What if I could get ahold of the owner?
Days went by, and I couldn’t reach the owner, and the bicycle was still missing. Then, when the Ontario bike theft hotline got me an email from the police, I checked into it. By the next day, I got a call that the police had retrieved the bike and that it was on its way to its rightful owner.
It felt great, but I’m not sure I would have heard anything from the police had it not been for the ride I took.
When I took the camera out of the bike, I couldn’t take it out. My dog, Aros, barked and scratched at me for getting rid of the camera, but I kept showing up at his doorstep and insisting that I could tell that my camera was stolen because he was lying down in the middle of the street looking for it.