After the beach cruiser--armed with a front basket and a Dutch bell--was stolen, Stewart made a quick 911 call. An officer arrived, and she rode with him in the squad car for an hourlong bike search. On the search, she found that she was a bit of a local celebrity, thanks to the fact that she rides her distinctive black bike everywhere. Several homeless men in a nearby park recognized her, and one described the thief ("but [the witness] was halfway in the bag at that point, so I couldn't get a good description," Stewart says). So Stewart--a fit twentysomething woman with cropped blond hair, who is the managing director of Seattle's all-ages music organization the Vera Project--launched an unusual campaign to try to find her treasured bike. "[The bike] is the only thing I own," says Stewart, who couch surfs because she doesn't earn much working at Vera.
Stewart fell in love with bicycles in Holland when she spent a year there after college. In Holland, bikes are the primary mode of transportation. "I liked the way everyone dresses normally and sits upright on their bikes," she says. She got her beloved Beach Cruiser post-Holland, from her best friend's dad, who dug up the old gem from his basement after talking bikes with Stewart.
After the bike was stolen, Stewart took out classified ads, then went one step further, making about 50 professional-looking fliers that read "STOLEN"--in bold, Wild West-style letters--above an illustration of the bike. Stewart hung the posters all over Capitol Hill, hoping to get a lead. She even offered to buy the bike back if someone had purchased the stolen cycle.
After she posted her ad, there was an outpouring of support. She has received 20 responses so far, some offering orphaned bikes. "I've gotten calls from people who say they have a bike in their basement that they have no use for," she says. (She currently has a mountain bike on loan, which actually gets her around town much quicker than her Beach Cruiser did.)
Others tell her where to go to find a cheap bike--the Classic Bike Swap in Snohomish, police auctions--while others call to rant about bike thieves. "I tapped into a community of used-bike users and people who hate bike thieves," she says.
Will Stewart see her bike again? The officer who let her tag along in his squad car for an hour doesn't think so. And a guy at Consolidated Works bike shop in Queen Anne has his own theory: A secret underground bike trade operates along the West Coast, dealing in unique bikes like hers. But other folks who called Stewart provided comforting anecdotes. One woman said her bike was stolen twice, but she found it both times after scouring the city's pawn shops.
