BUTTE — BUTTE — The bicycle is a symbol of summer, and it’s also a source of freedom for lots of kids. So if your bike gets stolen, it can be a real bummer. But for one Butte boy, luck was on his side when a good Samaritan happened upon his bike at a gas station and she had the courage to take it back.
"I thought it was really crazy and I can’t believe it happened for a second time in a row. I felt shocked, very much," says ten-year-old Carter Lider.
For the second year in a row, young Carter had lost his bike to a thief, but this time it was all caught on camera and Carter’s mom wasn’t going to sit back and let the thief gallivant around town on her son’s bicycle.
"I knew he was going to be riding around town. It was broad daylight—it was literally noon. He just walked into our yard and took his bike and so I was hoping that maybe if we could get the word out we might be able—I wasn’t hopeful but, we might be able to get it back," says Katrina Lider.
In security footage, a man enters Lider’s backyard. He checks the bike tire and in a matter of seconds the thief is off but it wasn’t long before security footage of his actions started to circulate online and then within two hours, Lider received a call from a stranger.
"I had this amazing woman call me who I had never met before. She FaceTimed me and she sent me a picture and she’s like, is this your son’s bike?" says Lider.
That afternoon Hannah Evans made a quick stop at a gas station on Harrison Avenue for some snacks when she noticed a man wearing a brightly colored shirt that matched the shirt in the security footage and she decided to confront the man. So she stayed in her truck and waited by the bike for the thief to emerge from the store.
As he walked around the corner where the bike was resting in the alley Evans called out, “Hey, you stole that bike.”
The man started to approach Evans saying, “No, I didn’t have a bike. I didn’t take anything.”
Evans says she raised her phone up as he approached and asked him to get away from her vehicle and then he took off running.
Hannah says it’s her first time encountering a situation where she has confronted a thief and taken back stolen property but she says she’s not sure if she’d call her actions heroic.
"I don’t know that I’d call it heroic but I knew I was gonna make some kid’s day. That’s for sure," says Evans. But, she said she would do it again because she just knew it would make the kid's day to get his bike back.
"I almost cried just to have somebody who I don’t even know see my post and act upon it and to see that bike laying there at the gas station and then to bring it home I was amazed. There are good people out there, really are," says Katrina Lider.
And thanks to Hannah’s bravery, its back to that summertime feeling of riding a bike for Carter Lider as he pops on his bike and takes a spin through the neighborhood.
"Feeling the wind, like, going across your face and it feels good. Really good," says Carter Lider.
He also offered up thanks to another good Samaritan who heard about the theft and the damage done to the bike in the short time that it went missing and delivered a near identical bicycle to Carter.
