It’s not uncommon for bicycles to go missing on the University of
Washington campus. Fancy $5,000 road bikes, busted $50

beaters—all of them end up in the hands of thieves, and
usually at a faster clip during the summer months, when more people
ride instead of drive and bike lifters have plentiful prey. Snipping
through cable locks and snatching untended cycles, they make off with
about 125 bikes annually, according to UW police.

What is incredibly uncommon is for one of these stolen bikes to be
recovered—and even more uncommon is for such a bike to be
recovered by a 25-year-old bioengineering grad student who has taken
the law into her own hands, stalked her stolen property on Craigslist,
jawboned authorities in two states into action, and even tried to set
up a Wal-Mart parking-lot sting operation, all to recover a Redline
Conquest Pro (a cyclo-cross bike) that she bought used last fall for
$850. “I’m not one to give up easily,” explained the student, Michelle
McCully.

When her ride disappeared on March 5, McCully scoured local
Craigslist postings, looking for the telltale signs that made her black
road bike different from all the rest: white handlebar tape, black
fenders, special pedals. No luck. She’d already filed a report with the
UW police (“They basically told me I was out of luck and probably not
going to find it”) and passed on the bicycle’s serial number just in
case (“Gotta have a serial number,” said UW police sergeant Doug
Schulz. “It’s really tough to track down bikes without a serial
number”). No luck with that, either. After a couple weeks, McCully felt
she’d probably hit a dead end.

It was a bummer for her. “It’s hard to find a good bike for a price
I’m willing to pay,”
she said.

McCully started looking for a replacement bike, including Craigslist
bike-sale postings in the Portland area, hoping to find the perfect
fit. On March 26, cruising the Portland Craigslist postings, she
randomly stumbled across what she believed to be her stolen bike. “I
kind of started shaking and probably didn’t stop for another 24 hours,”
she said. “I knew it was the bike. I have no idea how I fell asleep
that night.”

She called back the UW police, who recommended she ask the seller
for high-resolution photos. She called the Portland police, who told
her nothing could be done unless she had the name of the seller and a
location for an intended sale. She e-mailed the seller from an address
that masked her real identity, but she didn’t hear back and grew
increasingly antsy and frustrated. Friends were enlisted to make
offers. Finally, in the late afternoon of the
following day, the
seller started replying.

It turned out he was planning to show the bike to a likely buyer at
8:00 p.m. that evening in Portland, but could be persuaded by the offer
of an additional $50 to delay that meeting. “I left work, grabbed a
bus, went home, picked up my car, and grabbed a friend,” McCully said.
The sting was set for a Wal-Mart parking lot in Southeast Portland. The
two had about three and a half hours to get down there (in rush hour),
and McCully didn’t even know if the Portland police would be there at
the parking lot to back her up. Racing down I-5, she and her friend
used a cell phone to dial the Portland police and eventually convinced
an officer to meet them. It took a lot of doing, however, and
ultimately McCully didn’t make it to the sting at the appointed time.
When she reached the parking lot, the seller was nowhere to be
found.

Undeterred, she set up a base of operations at a friend’s apartment
and used the web to dig up information on the seller. Using Google and
reverse white pages against his e-mail address and phone number, she
figured out enough information to entice the police into another sting.
“That would have been really cool,” she said. “They would have put me
in a bulletproof vest and all if I’d gone and ID’d him.” But when she
finally made contact with him to set it up, still masking her real
identity, it turned out he’d sold the bike the previous night.

No matter. She’d already posted all over Portland’s Craigslist pages
warning people about the seller, and those posts lured him into
contacting her, demanding she take down her warnings. She played
hardball and ended up with contact information for the person he’d sold
the bike to. That was all Portland police needed to find the bike,
match it to McCully’s serial number, and open an investigation into
whether the seller, now a “person of interest” according to Portland
police spokesperson Mary Wheat, will face any charges. A district
attorney in Portland suggested McCully might belong on a detective
squad rather than in a bioengineering lab. Sergeant Schulz marveled at
her “very resourceful” freelance police work. And McCully, now
satisfied that justice has been served, is back on her Conquest Pro.
Though it took quite a bit of time and gas money to get it back, she
believes it was well worth the cost and effort. “I mean, I like the
bike,” she said. “It fits me, it’s comfortable, and it’s exactly what I
want.” recommended

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

17 replies on “Cycle of Justice”

  2. Michelle,

    You are my hero! Hell yeah, finally one for the bike thief victims. I am just going to experience all of my justice vicariously through you now, and hope that I never lose another bike that way.

    Thanks,

    John

  4. Anyone out there know if the City of Seattle has a pre-emptive bike registry program? I have heard of programs overseas that include a digital picture of the bike as well as a serial number to be stored with the police. I’d rather not just rely on the National Bike Registry alone ($10/year).

  5. So happy you got your bike back. Anyone out there know if the City of Seattle has a pre-emptive bike registry program? I have heard of programs overseas that include a digital picture of the bike as well as a serial number to be stored with the police. I’d rather not just rely on the National Bike Registry alone ($10/year).

  6. This is a great idea, a free, police-only digital database of bikes with their serial numbers, accessible from their patrol cars? Seems cheap and easy to me.

  7. Good job, Michelle. I had two bikes stolen my freshman and sophomore year at SU, never to be seen again. It’s nice to hear the cops actually cared about catching the guy, instead of just brushing it off like they usually do.

  8. I can’t find a website for a Seattle bicycle registry program, but the Cascade website lists this:
    Seattle Police/Bicycle Registry Program, (206) 684-8720

    There is a UW bike registry for UW students/faculty/staff: https://www.washington.edu/admin/police/…

    In my experience, I don’t think the police ever looked at my registration, but they cared very much that I had registered my bike.

    There is also a registry for stolen bikes which I recommend using if your bike is stolen or if you are considering buying a used bike. The guy who runs it would love to get police using it, maybe even with rfid tags on bikes, but for now it’s a grass roots sort of thing. stolenbicycleregistry.com

    And, since I’m sharing links, if you have some time on your hands and want to read the FULL story of my bike caper, you can find it here: students.washington.edu/mmccully/redline

    Happy Pedaling!
    -Michelle

  9. Great story! Glad that Michelle got her bike back. I was a lucky bike recover-er too, here’s my story:
    My bike, a custom ndependent Fabrication Crown Jewel SE, was stolen in February of 2008 from the UW campus. In September of 2008, 8 MONTHS LATER, I found the bike for sale in Tucson, ARIZONA on craigslist, with pictures and all. Sgt. Schultz at UW was incredibly helpful and convinced the University of Arizona police to attend an “appointment” I had made with the seller. They showed up, seized the bike, and shipped it back to me. A year later, I am one happy biker!!

    If you’ve had a bike stolen, here’s a few hints for recovery: If your bike gets stolen, craigslist and ebay are generally the best places to look for a bike. You can do a google advanced search for your bike – say “redline,” for example, using domain name “craigslist.org/bik” , which will pull up all postings with “redline” in every craigslist city in the country. You can also set up an ebay search that will email you every time an auction with “redline” included begins. Good luck!

  11. As long as I’ve lived in Seattle, nearly all of those that’ve had their bikes stolen were locking them with cable locks. If you spend $500+ for a bike, do yourself a favor and get a U-Lock. If you have $60 to spend, get a U-lock with an additional cable to use to make sure both wheel cassettes are locked.

  15. I am an Officer of the Seattle Police Department and I am far too busy looking for Mayor Nickels’ lost golf balls to be bothered with the citizenry and their petty disputes over private property.

    When will you learn? We ticket illegal parking, we enforce noise complaints on bars and we shoot blacks. I don’t know where you people ever got the idea that we have anything to do with you and your boring littany griefs.

    “Oh, I want my bike back! Stealing is a crime! Waaahhh!”

    Please. Shut up, get a new bike and let us get back to milking the clock and towing cars.

    Thanks.

  17. I’m going through a very similar situation myself, but with a stolen instrument…Hope I get the same results! Good job, Michelle!

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