After leaving her registered bike unlocked over Thanksgiving break, Chelee Ross '12 returned to campus to find her bike missing from her Howell House residence. This is a familiar tale for many students, but Ross was determined to get her bike back and took an uncommon approach to do so.
She decided to put up posters all over campus and downtown Brunswick. The posters featured a photo of her bike and contact information.
"I don't really see people doing this on campus, so I wondered if it was a weird thing to do," said Ross. "But I wanted my bike back, so I didn't care. At least people would have an idea of what it looked like. It was the first thing that came to mind."
A local Brunswick resident saw the posters downtown and alerted Bowdoin Security that he had seen a 16-year-old local male with Ross's bike, along with another bike.
The Brunswick Police Department has since charged the youth with receiving stolen property, and Ross has her bike back.
The Department of Safety and Security is still trying to identify the owner of the second bike found, a green and gray Fuji bike.
Directory of Safety and Security Randy Nichols said he believes this youth could be connected to the disappearance of several bikes on campus around the Visual Arts Center, Searles Science Building and Howell House.
"She showed great initiative and it paid off," said Nichols of Ross. "We were getting a spike in bike thefts and we'll see how the spike goes, because my theory is that someone who stole one bike probably stole several, and hopefully by the time we are done working with this we will get more bikes back."