Melissa Bailey Photo
Gerard “G‑Man” Gray was on his way to a parks department exercise class Wednesday morning when he spotted an abandoned tricycle on the sidewalk.
“Oh boy!” he thought to himself. “That’s one of the bikes!”
Gray pulled over his dump truck, tossed the stolen tricycle into the vehicle, and solved the final piece of a days-long puzzle to track down $5,000 of stolen city goods. The 10 Miami Sun tricycles, slow-moving low-riders painted in bright red, blue and green, were stolen from a storage shed at Edgewood Park’s Coogan Pavillion on Saturday. The parks department had them custom-made for senior citizens; it was using them for city-led excursions in the park.
The hunt began Saturday, when parks staffers tracked down two missing tricycles after a police dispatcher refused to help. By Monday, five more were recovered.
Martin Torresquintero, the city’s outdoor adventure coordinator who spearheaded the recovery mission, reported Wednesday morning that police recovered two more tricycles overnight. Gray recovered the final trike on his way into work that morning.
Gray, who’s 51, is a 14-year veteran of the city parks department. For the last seven, he’s worked in the tree division.
He left his Westville home Wednesday morning and headed to 180 Park Rd. in Hamden to pick up his dump truck. Then he headed to the Hillhouse High School Field House for a thrice-a-week walking group as part of the city’s wellness program.
He traversed west across Goodrich until it hit Dixwell Avenue. Then he saw it — a blue Miami Sun tricycle like the one he’d heard about on the news.
“I saw the trike right on the sidewalk,” next to a mattress store. It was “abandoned,” “just right there by itself.”
“There was so much publicity that nobody wanted to get caught with that bike,” Gray concluded. He called his boss, Christy Hass, and left her a message.
“I pulled over and put it right on the dump truck,” he said.
With the trike in a safe place, “I proceeded to go to the Field House and got my walk in.”
Around 9 a.m., he met Torresquintero on the New Haven Green and safely delivered the vehicle.
Then he set to work on his next task: Coiling up all those cords from the city’s holiday tree. The city has been deconstructing the tree for the past two and a half weeks.
Reached by phone, Hass commended Gray’s and others’ work in tracking down all 10 tricycles.
“It just shows you that if you have enough publicity, the community comes together” to solve the problem, she said.
The real story is why the Police dispatcher refused to help. Why should we be denied help from the Police Department because a (civilian)dispatcher refuses to help. Imagine if the Parks Department didn't take it upon themselvers to do the work of recovery!!