North Park woman tracks down bike with special story

A heartfelt plea came to the U-T newsroom from Rachel Hartsell, a student at UCSD School of Medicine.

“My boyfriend Patrick was killed on his bike while on a charity cross-country ride in 2015 by a woman who was texting and driving,” she emailed. “In response to this, his sister and I decided to buy Surly Long Haul Truckers and bike from Alaska to Florida in memory of him. ... Five years, six countries, 20,000 miles later, that bike is the steel extension of my soul.”

That’s why the recent, brazen theft of her 35pound, road warrior bike hit her so hard.

It was stolen under cover of darkness from a gated porch of her North Park apartment. A thief entered the gate and used wire cutters to sever the steel cable that tethered the bike to a piece of concrete.

“I was devastated,” said Hartsell, 32. She not only had pedaled 8,000 miles from Deadhorse, Alaska, to Key West, Fla., in Patrick Wanninkhof ’s memorial ride fundraiser, but also from Baltimore to San Diego three years ago to enroll in medical school here, and from Peru to Argentina on summer vacation.

Her Surly Long Haul Trucker bike, that originally cost about $1,200, is a utilitarian work horse. She describes its khaki brown finish, now a color referred to as Grandpa’s Thermos, as ugly. She even nicknamed her bike Swamp Hag.

“But it’s taken me all over the world, through hell and back, through the personal experience of losing my partner and quitting my job in New York,” she says. For her, its disappearance was like losing a cherished wedding ring.

When I caught up with Hartsell by phone Tuesday afternoon, she was printing “Stolen Bike” f lyers to post around her neighborhood. She already had schooled herself in local bike theft protocol, checking in with the Stolen Bike San Diego social networking group, and hearing that pilfered

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