By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
An Alberta snowbird couple has had their annual winter sojourn in Osoyoos soured after a favourite motorcycle was brazenly stolen from the parking lot of the Richter Pass Beach Resort in the wee hours of the morning on March 20.
“It’s just a heartbreaking thing,” says Fred Harvey of the theft of his 2003 Kawasaki z1000. “I was sure upset when I saw it, that it was gone. I knew instantly because they had torn the cover off and threw it on the ground and the bike was gone.”
It makes no sense to Harvey because as he notes there is nothing particularly attractive about his bike from a theft perspective – it’s not a decked out touring bike, it’s not new, and wasn’t even a high end bike in its prime.
But it was his steady stead for 21 years over more than 264,800 km of riding the western highways and byways including much of the sun drenched roads of the South Okanagan.
Fred Harvey’s 2003 Kawasaki z1000 had more than 246,000 km of riding on it.
The proverbial “insult added to injury” was the fact that with the warmer weather recently he had just taken the bike in for some spring tuning.
“The thing that really pissed me off was that I was just in Penticton Honda on Monday and had $700 in work done on it – they put a brand new tire on it and oil and filter change – $700 rode it one day and gone.”
It’s been a bitter pill to swallow for Harvey who in his entire life has never had one thing stolen from him. “I guess it’s a bit of a surprise getting anything stolen, but also Osoyoos kind of has a reputation for being a pretty safe place as well.
“I’ve never experienced that before. I mean, I couldn’t even think for two or three hours after it happened,” he says. When the Times Chronicle met with Harvey a day later on March 21 he was still reeling from the theft.
Harvey says he doesn’t feel any ill-will against Osoyoos for what happened because “I know this happens everywhere”.
He says he wasn’t too worried about leaving the bike in the parking lot because he had a lock on the trailer hitch, a lock on the bike wheel and it was covered with a tarp. The resort parking lot is also covered by security cameras, the images of which were posted the next day by resort manager Hughie Jennings.
Noting that Fred and his wife Judy come to Osoyoos every year, since 2016, with Jennings saying they are “great people” and the theft “makes us sick to our stomach”.
His Facebook post has generated quite a number of responses that have helped narrow down the truck – likely an older Ford, grey in colour and possibly an F250.
A video still from the surveillance camera at Richter Pass Beach Resort shows an older grey or silver, possibly two-tone, Ford pickup truck.
Jennings says that based on the video the thieves pulled into the resort’s parking lot next to the Coast Hotel and went straight to the trailer with the bike. An individual got out of the truck and removed the cover and straps off the motorcycle.
The truck then leaves and returns at 4:56 a.m. with a trailer into which the thieves load the Kawasaki before heading out east on Hwy. 3. Harvey was told by the RCMP that there had been a report of a trailer having been stolen the same night.
Harvey said that through his conversation with the RCMP officer it appeared as though there was a good idea of who might be behind the theft. Jennings’ Facebook post also contained a number of comments pointing to a fairly well known “chop shop” operating in the Bridesville area.
For Harvey, he’s already wondering what he’s going to do with the time on his hands without his trusty bike. Not much of a book reader, nor a pickleballer, Harvey was frequently out on his bike cruising the quieter backroads.
He adds that motorcycles have pretty much always been in his blood. His dad rode motorcycles during WW II and when he returned from the war he became a motorcycle policeman. “I guess I just picked it up from there,” he chuckles, adding he’s been riding for 62 years.
Back at home he has a bigger, heavier touring bike but because of his advancing years and the weight of the bike he was planning on selling it and keeping the smaller and lighter Kawasaki.
He’s hopeful he will get the bike back, but as he speaks about it he falls into a sort of rumination about what damage the thieves did to his bike as they moved it from one trailer to another.
“It really throws you for a loop, there’s no doubt about it. I still shake and I never slept at all, I’d wake up last night thinking about it and then couldn’t get back to sleep,” he says.
“It just bugs you that somebody would do that, to somebody else,” he adds.
Anyone with information about the bike theft is asked to contact the Osoyoos RCMP.
