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Strong reactions to bike thefts in Brockville and Calgary

stolen bike calgary
July 22, 2015
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A boy was brought to tears last Friday when the bike he borrowed from his sister was stolen. Hunter Zeron, a 10-year-old from Brockville, rode his sister Hope’s bike to the store with their other brother Chase. The two boys didn’t leave the bike outside the store for long.

“Not that long, maybe 10 minutes,” said Hunter to the Brockville Recorder. “My brother and me went to Walmart to see if somebody took the bike there. I didn’t know what to do.” The boy called home and was, as his father later said, hysterical. His eight-year-old sister’s bike was special. Hope had won the BMX for her fundraising efforts at her school’s Jump Rope for Heart event. She worked very hard to bring in $500 for the charity.

Laura Roobol, who was shopping that day, saw Hunter. “The little guy was just crying his eyes out,” Roobol said. “He was just heartbroken.” Roobol and another women were moved by the boy’s distress and each wrote cheques for $75 to help buy a replacement bike. While the Zeron family greatly appreciated the gesture, they are returning the cheques and plan to buy Hope a new bicycle.

Evan Polowick of Calgary recently experienced similar emotions to Hunter when Polowick’s mountain bike was stolen on July 10.

“I wasn’t angry. I was just sad. I just felt like ‘Oh crap, thieves suck.’ I felt violated,” Polowick said to the Calgary Herald. Polowick didn’t mention shedding tears, but the bike-theft statistics in Calgary are eye-watering.  The Herald reports that 730 bikes have been reported stolen in Calgary from January to May 2015. That number marks a 60 per cent jump compared to the same period in 2014. It’s also a 119 per cent increase from the 2010 to 2014 average.

After the theft, Polowick turned to social media.

In late June, Calgarian Shane Rempel set up a Twitter account called @FindMyBikeYYC to help the city’s cyclists in their efforts to recover bikes they’ve had stolen. Two of the bikes that have been posted to the Twitter feed have been recovered.

“I can’t fully attribute that to the tweets, but I think every little bit of exposure helps,” Rempel said.

So far, Polowick’s bike hasn’t been recovered.

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