The People of Colorado Vs. The Bad Apple

In 2003, I lived in Boulder, CO and I was poor. But I was into racing mountain bikes.

How does a poor bike racer get a bike when he's not fast enough to get a sponsorship? Unfortunately, the answer is craigslist. (for those of you who have heard the van story, this misguided craigslist experience actually precedes the Van craigslist experience.)

For a few months before Christmas that year, I'd been keeping an eye on all the classifieds, ready to pounce on the cheapest, nicest thing I could find over the winter. And I found an advertisement on craigslist, really liked the price, and I knew the bike was cool, so I bought it from a guy in Boulder for way less than it was worth. He claimed he had back problems, forcing the sale. It troubled me – despite the fact that the guy fit the bike, he seemed sketchy on a few different levels. But I ignored my gut feeling; I used cash, bought the bike, and was on my way.

The bike was fantastic. Super fast – rode great, etc. But it ate away at me, stupid conscience, that someone, somewhere was missing it.

So, after much debate, I decided to try to find out. In the end, it didn’t take much looking - sure enough, it was stolen and listed in a database of stolen bikes that I found online (www.nationalbikeregistry.com). So I called the database who put the owner in touch with me.

Strangely, the original owner (college guy) didn’t really want it back at first. He was grateful to have found the bike, but he’d already made an insurance claim and was shopping for new bikes. So basically, his insurance claim (if discovered) was void and he’d have to give the money back. So he doesn't really want it back – I keep the bike, case closed, right?

No indeed. I got some legal counsel from a friend, and because I reported the bike as "found" with the National Bike Registry, there was an official report - possibly available to police, insurance, etc. Which brought about all kinds of possibilities for insurance fraud, becoming someone's puppy in prison, etc.

The original owner of the bike thought about that, and after a while he decided in good conscience to take the situation to the Police. In the end he was really appreciative – getting his original bike back, doing the right thing, etc. He actually didn’t have enough money to buy a new bike anyway after paying the insurance deductible, so it was good for him to go the legal route.

As for me, I was out $500 unless the cops could find the perpetrator. Which was doubtful. Which made me think hard about the choice I made - buying the bike might have been a mistake, but was I obliged to dig for the truth about its origin?

My roommate at the time, a man of questionable moral fiber, was blown away by the whole situation. He told me: if you dig up the past all you get is dirty.
“You made the choice to start with,” he said when I was trying to decide if I should find out if the bike was stolen, “there’s no point in doing the right thing now.”

I wholeheartedly disagreed, and I still do. It’s not often that life lets you make a mistake and then lingers around to give you the opportunity to man up about it and be honest and come clean. And while you can’t control the whole world, or even parts of the world, you CAN control little parts of the world for little windows of time. That’s Free Will, and outside of our personal sense of right and wrong, acting upon that sense is perhaps the only thing that makes us who we are. In whatever corner of the world I control, theft ain’t cool.

My sense of righteousness was eventually rewarded...sort of. In the Spring of 2004, The Bad Apple, a local dirtbag, drug addict, and bike thief (and the guy who'd sold me the stolen bike) was arrested in a blaze of glory. Having been too drunk to effectively mace the cop who was conducting the sting to arrest him, he had fled on foot, and was thoroughly beaten down by some of Denver's finest. Sweet.

Then the legal process started.

I'll try to keep this brief: The Bad Apple was arrested, posted bail, skipped town, was caught, brought up on other charges, incarcerated, released on work-bond, re-incarcerated for other crimes, did some hard time, and...eventually I lost track. I did, however, update my address with the Colorado judicial system every time I moved on the off chance that, eventually, this guy would be released from prison and sent back to work. A part of his restitution, as I understood it, was to pay his victims for the damages he'd caused. Unfortunately, it was quite a lot of damage. And I was pretty far down the list. But who knows?

On Monday this week, 7 years after the crime was committed, I got something in the mail from The Colorado Judicial System. The Bad Apple (whom I've chosen to leave nameless here on the off chance that he is trying to start his life again on the up and up) is apparently out of prison and back to work. And The People of Colorado vs The Bad Apple seems to have it's own bank account by which it's sending out restitution checks to his victims based upon his current earnings minus his living expenses.

The physical manifestation of our legal system's success: a check for $11.34. I'd take a picture of it and post it here, but it's got his name on it, and again, I don't want to throw the poor sack under the bus if he's finally trying to do the right thing. More to follow? Who knows. Finances aside, it doesn't really matter.

Happy Friday, good people of the world. Keep riding. Your karmic investments will be returned to you, but the equation isn't necessarily enacted all at once.