7 On Your Side: Bay Area nonprofit helps return stolen bikes to rightful owners

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A nonprofit fighting bicycle thefts is celebrating its one-year anniversary Wednesday night. It's also celebrating its first success at reuniting a woman with her stolen bike.

An estimated 4,000 bikes are stolen in San Francisco every year, but now there is a way Bay Area bike owners can protect their wheels.

Spike Kahn of San Francisco bought a bicycle right after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"And started riding down to the beach, back and forth from the Mission, because it cleared my head and got me exercise," Kahn said.

Pedaling gave her strength through grueling cancer treatments and she says her wheels set her free.

"It's very liberating to just get on my two wheels and in 10 minutes I'm almost anywhere in the city," Kahn said.

It was devastating when Kahn came out of her doctor's office the other day to find her beloved bike was stolen.

"I had locked it up at a bike rack at 10 o'clock in the morning and at 10:30 a.m. it was gone and I just looked at it. I could not believe. I just stared at this bike rack," she said.

In an instant, a thief had sawed through the U-lock and whisked away the wheels she's depended on for seven years.

"I was so upset, I just started marching all over San Francisco just looking for my bike, which did not help," she said.

She posted notices online and searched flea markets, but gave up hope of ever seeing her bicycle again until suddenly she received a San Francisco Police Department telling her they found it.

Police caught the thief trying to sell her bike at UN Plaza. Thankfully, Kahn had registered it with the nonprofit safebikes.org and the officer saw this registration sticker on the bottom.

Morgan St. Clair runs SAFE Bikes. The program is celebrating its one-year anniversary, and as it turns out, Kahn is the very first person to recover her bike through the registry.

"We have 7,000 registered bikes so far, the number is growing every day," St. Clair said.

It's nowhere near the number of thefts. Police say one bike is stolen every three hours in San Francisco.

Officers recover hundreds of bikes but most wind up in a police warehouse, with no way to identify their owners.

"It's very important that you register your bicycles, so if police do come across a bicycle on the street we can quickly reunite the bicycle with its owner," San Francisco police spokesman Albie Esparza said.

Thefts are down about 20 percent since the program began, but SAFE Bikes is urging all owners to register.

SAFE Bikes is celebrating its first anniversary Wednesday night with a party and benefit at 111 Minna Street in San Francisco. It's open to anyone and it costs $50.