Inside Bellingham’s ‘underground network of recovery artists’ who track down stolen bikes

Toby had just moved to Bellingham from Seattle when, in September of last year, he went out of town for work. When he got back, Toby, who asked that his last name be left out to not alert potential burglars of the break-in, and his wife couldn’t find their mountain bikes.

“I basically found a window pushed through, a door opened and the bikes I guess just kind of got wheeled out,” Toby told the Bellingham Herald over the phone.

Toby filed a police report online, but decided to look into other ways to recover his bike while he waited to hear back from the police.

“A friend was saying that there’s some Facebook groups, so I had to apply to [get] in and I just posted on there,” Toby said. “Actually within the hour, somebody already had a lead on someone who’d recovered my wife’s bike.”

That person was Travis Stendahl, a local UPS supervisor who had noticed a bike locked to a tree in his backyard.

“It was probably the easiest bike I’ve ever recovered because it was literally on my property,” Stendahl said. “It was actually chained to a tree in my yard. … What ended up happening is I literally cut the tree down because I couldn’t cut the lock.”

An ‘underground network’

Of the 349 bikes stolen in Bellingham last year, 295 weren’t recovered by the police. Stendahl doesn’t go out of his way to track down stolen bikes, but says he’ll recover them when the opportunity presents itself. He estimates that he’s recovered three or four stolen bikes. He’s not alone.

“There is kind of an underground network of Facebook recovery artists,” Stendahl said.

It isn’t an organized group as much as a collection of disparate people who keep an eye out for bikes that might be stolen. It largely operates place within a handful of Facebook groups, the most prominent of which is the Bellingham Stolen Bicycle Group. The private group has 3,300 members and has seen 21 new posts in the past month. It’s unclear how many bikes people from the group have recovered.

Usually these posts occur when people see a bike they suspect was stolen, according to the group’s administrator, Cory Blackwood, although nearly as many come from people whose bikes have been stolen.

“A typical post is generally somebody that sees something that looks amiss — somebody that they feel probably wouldn’t own a mountain bike, riding a bike around town, or dumped bikes in different places,” said Blackwood, who also owns Ritual Records.

To work with the police or not?

The group, originally intended to help members of the Bellingham biking community, eventually became a point of contention.

“For a couple of years it was leaning really heavily into that vigilante mindset. ‘We need to go target these people, and do this and do that.’ And I think that has tapered off in the last maybe year or so, which I really appreciate because one, it’s not legal and two, I don’t think it’s really effective,” Blackwood said.

At its peak, Blackwood estimated there were between 30 to 50 vigilantes active in the Facebook group. While vigilantism in the group has started to decline, it’s still common.

“It happens,” Stendahl said. “I don’t want to drop names because that could technically put them in legal activities, but it definitely, 100% happens.”

Dan Sheehan, another member of the group, recovered a bike once without the help of the police, although he said he did notify them. He was driving near the railroad tracks when he saw someone on a bike he suspected was stolen.

“I approached him in my vehicle and I said — I had confirmed the bike was stolen on the Facebook page — ‘Hey man, just so you know, the cops are coming. You can wait here with the bike, but I know that bike is stolen.’ … He said, ‘I don’t want to go to jail, man. Some guy just gave it to me. I had nothing to do with it.’ And he just left the bike on the ground and he ran away,” Sheehan said.

In other cases, someone will do all of the leg work themselves before calling the police to make the recovery. That’s how Logan Nelson, a videographer who used to work at Bellingham bike shop Fanatik, recovered Toby’s other bike.

Nelson was walking out of an O’Reilly Auto Parts store when he saw a mountain bike on the back of a car.

“It was covered in a tarp, and I walked up and was pulling the tarp off the back of this person’s car, to see what kind of bike it was,” Nelson said. “And while I was doing that, the person who was driving the car came out of O’Reilly and got in and noticed me.”

Nelson quickly got pictures of the bike to post them on social media before following the car to see where it parked. That night, after connecting with Toby online, he returned to see if the bike was still there.

“Later that evening, he’s like ‘I’ve got eyes on it again,’” Toby said.

Nelson met Toby at the car’s location and called the police, who took a quick look at the bike before determining it must be Toby’s.

The signs of a stolen bike

Toby was lucky that his bike was still recognizable when it was found. Unless a bike’s serial number is recorded, it can be difficult for police to track down stolen bikes because their parts can be changed.

“You have to give descriptors of your bike and suddenly your bike is only half your bike, because it’s not that hard to change the pieces out. So you’ll find different grips, different tires … different components, cheaper components, but mismatched components,” Stendahl said.

There are other signs a bike may be stolen. Nelson, who’s posted suspected stolen bikes in the Facebook group around 15 times, and made a recovery himself four times, said he becomes suspicious when he sees someone on a bike who isn’t dressed properly for a bike ride.

But when those signs aren’t there, he said members of the group tend to guess whether someone could afford the bike they’re riding based on how they’re dressed.

“It’s tough, you have to look at the person and make some assumptions, unfortunately, about how they look. It’s really quite obvious usually, considering the type of bike,” Nelson said.

Assumptions about homelessness

Bike vigilantes have made a habit of targeting Bellingham’s homeless population, according to Blackwood. Much of the Facebook group consists of people “just claiming that so-and-so looks homeless and that person probably shouldn’t be riding a bike that nice,” he said.

While many bikes have been recovered, watchful Facebook group members around town are sometimes mistaken. Several sources interviewed for this story mentioned that one member of the local biking community, named Dash, has been a frequent target of vigilantes due to his appearance.

The Facebook group is littered with photos of Dash on his bright green EVIL bike, both from vigilantes suspicious of him and from friends notifying the group that he bought his bike legitimately.

“He’s like a local legend of sorts. He, I would say, often will maybe have an appearance of someone who’s homeless or something, but it is legit, his bike,” Nelson said.

Sheehan, who also estimates he’s recovered three or four bikes, made clear that he thinks threatening or harassing anyone over a potentially stolen bike is completely misguided.

“The last thing I want is people going around town threatening people to get other people’s bikes back,” Sheehan said.

But he said he understands why some members of the group make these generalizations.

“You can tell if somebody’s obviously homeless and they’re on a $4,000 mountain bike,” Sheehan said. “I mean, that math doesn’t add up.”

“I know it might not be the most gracious thing to say,” Sheehan added, “but I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for thieves.”

A community effort

According to Stendhal, civilian bike recovery shouldn’t be necessary but there isn’t a good system in place for bike registration.

“It’s really unfortunate. We’re such a bike town, and without you taking the appropriate, extra-expensive steps to over-secure your bike in Bellingham, they will walk off with it,” Stendahl said.

For Toby, the work that complete strangers were willing to put into finding his bike was telling of how strong Bellingham’s biking community is.

“We kind of were new to the area. We had friends there, but just seeing the community as a whole, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Toby said. “The above-and-beyond that Logan did and Travis as well, it was pretty unbelievable to me.”