Today I did my monthly shopping, and took everyone except for ds12, who had his chumash learning group in the morning to attend.  When I got home ds wasn’t home, so I called a couple of friends whose homes I thought he might be at, and found him at the second house.

When he got on the phone, he told me his bike had just been stolen when he was in synagogue for afternoon services, and he had gone to this friend afterward who lives close by to report it to the neighborhood patrol.  He uses his bike all the time to get around, and it’s so important to him to have one that told me he’ll buy himself another one.

While I was out, he slept earlier in the day and was so well-rested and perky that I decided to take him with me to my parenting class rather than leave him home with everyone else who was in the winding down stage of the evening.  Since we meet in the synagogue, I told him he could go upstairs for the evening prayer service and then he could learn on his own or read while he waited for me.  When my class ended 90 minutes later, he told me he had his bike back!

Here’s what happened: a boy of about 14 or 15 came to the synagogue to learn and was riding ds’s bike.  While this boy went upstairs to learn. leaving the bike downstairs, ds took his bike to the home of a friend nearby (who was the same friend from whose home he had reported the theft a few hours before) to leave it in a safe place; he wasn’t sure how to approach the older boy to tell him that was his bike. Fortunately, his friend’s father came home when he was there with the bike, and went back with him to quiz the teenager.  The teen explained that he bought the bike from a local pawn shop a few hours before, and that the owner seemed to be in a rush to get rid of it.  So the community patrol was again contacted and the father of his friend spent a while on the phone with them giving them all the details. (Yes, while all of this was going on I was giving my class and I had no idea!)

The shop has a video recording of everyone who was there today, so they’re going to check it out tomorrow so they can identify the thief.  Ds got his bike back, and the boy (who ds told me was a really nice kid) was told he would get his money back when they straightened it out with the pawn shop, which I hope is very soon since he was just buying what he thought was a nice bike at a great price. 

So less than five hours after his bike was stolen, ds12 has his bike back again!  This was only the second time that I brought ds with me to my class, and amazingly enough, he was there at just the right time to see the person with his bike!  Though bike theft is all too common in our city, getting it back isn’t , and it’s really fun that not only does ds have his bike back, but he has a good story to go along with it!

Avivah