Rob's bike before theft. "He handed me a bag that was supposed to have money in it."

On November 27, Rob Z. linked up with a person from the OfferUp app to sell his Trek Fuel Ex bike accessorized with aftermarket components. That Saturday, they met at Hollandia Park in San Marcos, about three miles northwest of where the 78 and 15 intersect. "He handed me a bag that was supposed to have money in it. When I looked down to unzip it, he ran and jumped on the bike and got away from me," Rob explained to us on the Stolen Bike San Diego Facebook page.

"Needless to say, the bag only had white blank pieces of paper in it." Rob then called the sheriff's department to make a report.

On December 10, I reached out to Rob, who replied but couldn't provide an update on whether someone took him up on the $1,000 reward for the whereabouts of his carbon fiber bike. "[He's] about 5 feet 10 inches, about 135 lbs., dirty blonde hair, white male, red beanie, white shirt, blue jeans, wearing a medical mask .... [I] kinda wanna have a conversation with him." On Facebook, Rob added a screenshot of the alleged perp's OfferUp handle.

Bryan Hance, co-founder of BikeIndex.org

"I have zero surprises this guy's 'fake cash' scammer came from OfferUp," Bryan Hance said to me on December 14. "We at Bike Index have been encouraging all victims involving OfferUp to send in complaints to the Washington Attorney General. Because the app has long refused to clean up their terrible platform."

Hance is the co-founder of BikeIndex.org, a nonprofit organization with an app and website that contains over 688,000 cataloged bikes worldwide, tens of thousands of day-to-day searches, and about 1,250 community partners. Hance's site has connected many San Diegans with their stolen bikes. In 2019, he helped a Coronado resident locate his $6,000 bike at a Tijuana swap meet. "Mike, attached are all our stats for a 25-mile radius of San Diego to today's date." His table indicates that within San Diego this year, there were 422 bikes reported stolen on his site — a jump from 243 reported on his site last year. Since Rob's bike was stolen on November 27, over 32 other bikes within San Diego County were reported stolen on Bike Index; eight were reportedly found.

Back on the Stolen Bike San Diego Facebook page, on November 30, Jennifer, one of the fellow-1800 members, suggested we reach out to SANDAG, San Diego Association of Governments. Per Jennifer's email to SANDAG: "As you approach the Dec 3rd board meeting and specifically agenda item number 5 regarding the Regional Bike Plan Early Action Program, will you please discuss that while "making the bicycle a useful form of transportation for everyday travel," and using funds from the $200 million initiative, that an increase of bike facilities and pathways are not all that is needed.

Screenshot from Bike Index of recent bikes reported stolen in San Diego

"We citizens and tourists need a ban akin to the ones in Long Beach and Los Angeles that will 'prohibit the assembly, disassembly, sale, offer of sale, distribution of bicycles, and bicycle parts on public property or within the public right of way.' As a matter of public safety and transportation, we need to be assured that we are guaranteed safe passage without bike chop shops in our public right of way. We need to have some sort of assurance that our bicycles will actually be there when we desire to ride them and that we can effectively recover them without danger to ourselves, as some of us have already experienced when bikes go missing."

Hance — who attributes the rise in bike theft throughout the U.S. to the covid pandemic — read Jennifer's post. "It's amazing to me how many 'cycling funds' or 'cycling orgs' or 'cycling groups' have zero anti-theft components to them," he continued. "And I think maybe some of the dovetails with the SANDAG thing — are all used to regular 'bread and butter' efforts like shared bike paths, painting sharrows, adding bike infrastructure, etc. But when they're asked to do anything anti-theft, they simply come up totally blank.

"We're trying to educate traditional bike/walk advocacy groups that you don't have cyclists anymore if people can't keep their bikes safe. It's an uphill battle."