Carl Hutzler’s Blog

My son started riding his bike to school about 6 weeks ago. Two or three days ago he lost his bike lock and he asked for a new one. I did not yet get a chance to buy him a new one and today his bike was taken from the school bike rack. He was bummed but had the chance to report the crime to a police officer who was at the school on other routine business at the time.

When he got home, I had the car ready for a little “site seeing” tour of the neighborhood around the school. I mean, if I were a kid that just “acquired” a new bike and it was a nice day like it was today, I know what I would be doing!

The kids were excited at the chance to find the bike. Oh, and along for the ride was my 11 FPS Nikon D3 and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Just in case we happened to find the culprit enjoying my son’s ride. 12MP can be damning evidence indeed!

We drove around for about 15 minutes before we came to the end of a small townhouse cluster next to the school. We saw a kid getting on a bike that had been on the ground. We got a little closer and the kid started to ride away. I thought it might be my son’s bike and handed the camera to my son to try and get a shot. He fired away, but we only got a distant, blurry shot. I called the officer and left a message as to our location and that we might have seen the bike. But I was not 100% sure as he road away fairly quickly.

I parked the car and waited nearby. We saw the kid ride by on the path a couple of times. So we decided to get out of the car and go play on the little tot playground and wait him out. Sure enough, within minutes the kid and friend came by again. This time I got ‘em.

After the kids road past, my kids and I left and got in the car and drove out to the main road where we called the police officer again. She called back and said an officer had been dispatched to the location (she was busy and could not meet us). Within minutes the other officer came to our location and took a full report. She then went to stake out our man.

Hopefully we will get the bike back soon. I told the officer I did not want to press charges if she would promise to scare the stuff out of the kid. She smiled and promised.

I told my son never to take the law into his own hands…which we did not. And I told him to be careful pursuing a criminal…especially an older kid or adult who might retaliate. But for this this silly issue, I think we did the right thing and I don’t think the kid will have any idea how he got caught.