#breckenridge #realestate #colorado
Silverthorne resident Benjamin Umayam has never owned a car in his life. So, when Umayam, 68, retired from his career as chef in New York City and moved to Summit County three years ago, he invested in an electric bike worth $1,800 to get around.
Like many retirees, Umayam has a routine: Most mornings he’ll hop on his bike in the morning and coast down the big hill from Wildernest to Silverthorne to have coffee at Red Buffalo Cafe before swinging by the recreation center.
“The bike is my attraction to getting places in my retired life, it’s essential,” Umayam said, adding that he writes short stories, some which have been published, about “riding around and enjoying nature.”
But for the past two weeks, Umayam has been taking the bus.
After returning late from a ukulele performance on Sunday, Aug. 20, Umayam found his bike had been stolen. He said he used a cable lock to secure his bike in a carport the night before, right where he usually does when he gets home. But it was gone — not even the lock had been left behind.
ust like ski and snowboard theft in the winter, bike theft ebbs and flows in Summit County and along the Interstate 70 corridor all summer long, according to Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons.
The proximity to the fast moving and crowded highway, as well as the high concentration of recreationalists with expensive equipment, makes these Colorado mountain towns popular targets, FitzSimons said.
“These thieves are opportunists,” FitzSimons said. “They drive around looking for these bikes that are unattended and they snatch them pretty quickly — really quickly.”
Between July 1 and Aug. 8, FitzSimons said 18 bikes worth a combined $87,000 have been reported stolen in Summit County alone. Meanwhile, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office is working jointly on more than one bike theft case with law enforcement in Vail, he said.
