vivi torontali

Not caught up? Read Episodes 1-27 here.

As you read in the last episode, “Immigrated, Infiltrated, Integrated,” my mom and I passed our Danish exams and have since moved on to Module 3. For the first time, my mom got a teacher she likes– she learned more in one class than in every prior class in Modules 1 and 2 combined. Wednesday, March 18th was a beautiful day, and she was looking forward to biking to class. She left the apartment, then returned about two minutes later in a panic. At first, she thought she was going crazy, then quickly realized that her and my dad’s bikes were stolen right out of our own basement.

To give some context, the basement is like a fortress. Every resident gets a physical key that opens the door to the building, and in order to get to the basement either through the parking garage or by elevator, they need to use the key again. Our complex is only about three years old, and it’s very well-protected. Or so we thought. Luckily, my parents are smart people and put hidden AirTags in the bikes, stickers that say “GPS tracking” and at least two heavy-duty locks. You may remember the whole “how many locks is too many locks” debate in Episode 3, “Good problems to have,” when we first received our moving boxes. The first thing we did was check the location of the AirTags, and found they were in a nearby apartment complex. The second thing we did was call the cops. We told them we know where the bikes are, but they told us to go on site and find them, then call again to summon officers to the crime scene.

The third thing we did was go down to the basement and investigate the damage. My bike was still there, thank goodness, but my little storage pouch and kickstand were removed. There were rear lights from my parents’ bikes on the floor, along with my kickstand wrapped in my mom’s bike lock. The thieves had pried my kickstand off and used it to break the chain on my parents’ bikes. It’s likely that they were alerted by the stickers and looked for GPS trackers which is why the rear lights were broken off, but they didn’t find them until they got to their destination.

The fourth thing we did was go to the other apartment complex and snoop around. My dad took his scooter and I took my bike, my mom walked. It was a five minute walk away, and we cruised around the three buildings in the complex to see if they were parked outside somewhere. No luck. We then rang some doorbells and got into the building. The residents didn’t care who we were– they just let us in, asked what we wanted, then went about their day. Maybe that’s exactly the problem. 

We looked around the middle building first, where the app said our AirTags were. There were gaps on the top of each storage unit in the basement, so we used our phone cameras to get a better view, just to see if we recognized anything. Maybe a little unethical, but frankly we didn’t care much for people’s boxes of Christmas ornaments. Eventually, we got to the door of a maintenance room. We played the AirTag sounds from both my parents’ phones, and we heard them through the door. There was a slot for mail, so we were able to peek into the room. We then called the cops again, as we were convinced that with the AirTags, we will find the bikes.

The cops arrived, a young lady and a young man. They asked us some questions to establish a time frame, a way to get further leads, etc. They called the maintenance guy’s number, then he came and opened the door. We located the AirTags in his jacket pocket which was hung on a chair in the middle of the room. He said he picked them up off the floor in another building, then took us there. We searched around in the other building, then opened an unlocked, empty storage unit. There we found a cargo carrier frame from my dad’s bike. We snooped around with our cameras a bit more until the cops told us to stop. They then said that it’s a dead end, that because we have no persons of interest, ways to (ethically) find the bikes, or further leads, that there’s nothing left they can do for us. All we could do was file a police report and keep an eye on Facebook Marketplace. Sometimes it can take months for the bike to pop up because that’s when the victim stops looking, and sometimes it gets listed on another island. We were given extremely small odds for finding the bikes, but the officer lady told my very upset mother that a recent theft victim did find their missing items, so not all hope is lost. They closed the case within a day. We were on our own.

My mom didn’t sleep for the next two days. We couldn’t stop theorizing, grieving, and trying to figure out what had happened and where they might’ve taken our bikes. We theorized that the thieves must have come through the garage, and there must be surveillance footage we could check. We asked our building manager, and she said that there are no cameras in the parking garage. So much for our building being a fortress. 

In my attempts to comfort my mother, I told her the reason she felt so angry and violated is because the life she spent time, energy, and money on building and protecting got taken from her without her knowledge or control. People get scammed out of their hard-earned money, their living space gets robbed, valuables taken. God forbid their body gets harmed, or their loved ones’. We were lucky that we were left physically unscathed, even if this is a huge loss. She now has no way of bringing home groceries, getting to class without buying a train ticket for that one stop, or enjoying the nice weather. With a broken foot and asthma, she needs the electric bike. My dad is lucky to have received an electric scooter for his birthday just last month (see Episode 27, “Immigrated, Infiltrated, Integrated”), though riding it is “not advised in the rain.” And well, you know Denmark– half the year is rainy weather. 

On Friday, March 20th, my parents decided to go back to the scene of the crime and snoop around some more. My mom had a feeling– a sixth sense, if you will– that the bikes are close. They tried the last building out of the three in the complex. They rang a door on the first floor, and a young man answered. His wife came out curiously, they asked what we wanted, and my mom explained the situation. The husband said, “I’m up for an adventure,” then took them down to the basement. When they didn’t find the bikes in any of the storage units, the couple offered to take my parents to other buildings. Turns out, this couple is on the housing board, so they have a key to every building in the complex. Suddenly, my dad shouted, “hold on, I think I found them!” And there they were: two small, electric bikes, one black and one white, in an unlocked, empty storage unit not ten doors down from the maintenance room the AirTags were found in. If the thieves had bothered to cover the bikes, or even lock the storage unit, we would never have found them. Lucky for us, they were incredibly stupid. 

While working on my art book for the exhibition, I got a text from my mom that said “We found the bikes. We’re bringing them home.” My sister and I rejoiced, unable to believe it. I couldn’t wait to hear the story. There was some damage to the bikes, for example a loose screw on my mom’s brake, but nothing a day of work can’t fix. My dad is quite the bike repairman, having fixed three flat tires I got in the past two months and even fixing my bike’s painful squeaking. 

When they finally returned home, my parents told the story to me, our neighbor, and everyone they’ve been regularly texting. Since it all happened, I have heard the full story at least fifteen times, and now you have the pleasure of reading it. A running joke this past week was how crazy the next bløg episode was going to be, and I’ve been eager to write it ever since. 

The story doesn’t end there, though. My family decided to do something incredibly spiteful: to return to the storage unit and stick a paper on the wall that says, “you stole from the wrong people. The police are involved,” complete with a giant middle finger in the middle. I purposely don’t swear in my bløg or wish bad things upon people, but I think this was very much warranted. I want nothing more than to see the look on their faces.

Our lasting theory is that the thieves were two opportunistic and very dumb teenagers. There were likely only two of them because my bike wasn’t taken, and it’s likely that my metal, U-shaped lock did me a lot of favors that day. Because the bikes were damaged and things were broken off, we think the thieves didn’t steal in order to sell.

As a way of taking preventative measures, we invested in new, (hopefully) impenetrable locks, extra trackers that don’t make noise like an AirTag would, and a new kickstand for me. My mom even cleaned out our storage unit and made space for three private parking spaces. I’m very lucky that in time for my next bløg episode, I was able to write a happy ending. Not every crime victim gets that, especially not with the help of law enforcement. I’ve fallen victim to theft before, and I know the feeling of losing something valuable and not being able to get it back. A piece of advice I have for you, dear audience, is to not invest in a nice bike unless you really have to. It’s not worth the paranoia or the grief. Also, hold onto your phone for dear life. My classmate got hers stolen at Copenhagen Central Station, and it was last seen in Lithuania. 

As I mentioned in Episode 3, “Good problems to have,” bike theft is incredibly common in Denmark. As I also mentioned in Episode 7, “Party time,” in any new country, good things will happen and bad things will happen. We experienced a loss, then made a comeback with a huge win. My mom’s dream now is to identify the thieves and take down a much larger-scale bike theft ring.