How’s this for a feel good story? Nowadays, whenever a bike gets stolen, it’s usually buh-bye already for the unfortunate owner. The bike either gets sold somewhere faraway, or gets dismantled and sold for parts.
All that happened to this bike.
A year and four months ago, triathlete Luigi Robles lost his bike to thieves after leaving it outside of an establishment just for a few minutes. All hope was lost as all leads turned up to be a dead end. Eventually, Luigi moved on and got a new bike. This time, an Argon 18 E-118.
He even finished the Osaka Marathon last November 2018.
Last December 16, Andy Leuterio, owner of Maximus Athlete’s Bike Shop, posted this story on his facebook page.
The bike was passed on from seller to seller (bike laundering?) until someone recognized it as the stolen bike. We all know that unless the bike has custom paint or has parts that’s unique from the rest, it’s very hard to distinguish one bike from another.
Luigi’s bike fortunately has the bike shop’s sticker which is equipped with the latest nanotechnology. Andy, Luigi and the rest of the team used the signal emitted by the sticker to triangulate the location of the bike which eventually led to it’s recovery.
Kidding aside (that was just an ordinary sticker!), it took a lot of planning and coordination with the Police Department and Luigi’s team to pull of the recovery heist.
Check out Luigi’s post about the topic.
We won’t dive in into the actual operation details anymore but what’s important is that the bike is now reunited with it’s owner. Something that you don’t see everyday.. especially when it comes to lost bikes.
Now how do we get that sticker??
Merry Christmas, everyone!
