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Column: A North Park resident tracks down her stolen property

The bike she rode across the United States in a memorial ride honoring her late boyfriend was stolen from her porch

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A heartfelt plea came to the U-T newsroom from Rachel Hartsell, a student at UCSD School of Medicine.

“My boyfriend Patrick was killed on his bike while on a charity cross-country ride in 2015 by a woman who was texting and driving,” she emailed. “In response to this, his sister and I decided to buy Surly Long Haul Truckers and bike from Alaska to Florida in memory of him. ... Five years, six countries, 20,000 miles later, that bike is the steel extension of my soul.”

That’s why the recent, brazen theft of her 35-pound, road warrior bike hit her so hard.

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It was stolen under cover of darkness from a gated porch of her North Park apartment. A thief entered the gate and used wire cutters to sever the steel cable that tethered the bike to a piece of concrete and picked the U lock.

“I was devastated,” said Hartsell, 32. She not only had pedaled 8,000 miles from Deadhorse, Alaska, to Key West, Fla., in Patrick Wanninkhof’s memorial ride fundraiser, but also from Baltimore to San Diego three years ago to enroll in medical school here, and from Peru to Argentina on summer vacation.

Her Surly Long Haul Trucker bike, that originally cost about $1,200, is a utilitarian work horse. She describes its khaki brown finish, now a color referred to as Grandpa’s Thermos, as ugly. She even nicknamed her bike Swamp Hag.

“But it’s taken me all over the world, through hell and back, through the personal experience of losing my partner and quitting my job in New York,” she says. For her, its disappearance was like losing a cherished wedding ring.

When I caught up with Hartsell by phone Tuesday afternoon, she was printing “Stolen Bike” flyers to post around her neighborhood. She already had schooled herself in local bike theft protocol, checking in with the Stolen Bike San Diego social networking group and hearing that pilfered bikes often are stored for a year or so before being offered for sale.

She even visited a makeshift bike chop shop Monday in Barrio Logan, discovering a graveyard of derelict bikes awaiting dismemberment like the discarded toys in “Toy Story.”

A sympathetic SDPD officer gathered the theft information and asked if she had any evidence. She did. Her landlord had examined security camera footage and, bingo, spotted a woman estimated to be in her 30s checking out the building Sept. 29.

She re-appeared after midnight wearing a halter top with a tattoo visible on her left shoulder blade. She carried cable cutters and, in less than two minutes, took off with Hartsell’s bike.

Now comes the rest of the story. Hartsell’s tale, it turns out, has a fairytale finish.

She began her own investigation, sharing details of her loss with residents and transients in the neighborhood. On Tuesday she left reward flyers in pawn shops, thrift shops and grocery stores and passed them out to pedestrians and cyclists.

Her happy ending came in a Smart & Final parking lot at 5 p.m. Tuesday. She was riding her $50 spare bike and pulled into the lot to check her messages. While there, she handed a flyer to a man on a bike.

“I know this bike,” said the stranger, who explained that he buys, fixes and re-sells bicycles. “I sold this bike to a guy two days ago.”

He explained that he didn’t know the bike was stolen when he bought it from a customer — a man, not the woman in the surveillance video. Apparently, the Surly had changed hands a couple of times after its theft a week earlier. “ I just need to un-do this deal,” he told Hartsell.

“He didn’t ask for any money,” she said. Nevertheless, Hartsell insisted on paying a reward so he would follow through. She left the parking lot feeling better than she had for days.

At 7 p.m., he called with good news: “I have your bike. Where do you want me to bring it?” They rendezvoused near her home.

“It’s in miraculous shape,” says Hartsell. “The front rack is missing and half of the bar tape gone, but it was essentially unscathed.”

She notified police of her happy ending and sent a thank-you to the man who had gone out of his way to return her bike: “I felt horrible after hearing the backstory about the bike,” he replied.

From now on, she says, Swamp Hag will be stored inside her 400 square-foot apartment.

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