Father rides to the rescue over bicycle

Published: February 19, 2007 | 5608th good news item since 2003

A student was reunited with her stolen bike after her dad made a 360-mile trip to come to the rescue.

Mitali Manuel, a law student at New Hall, Cambridge, lost her treasured Raleigh bike when it was stolen from a cycle rack outside her college in Huntingdon Road.

When she told her father Arnand, 53, what had happened, he offered to drive from Manchester with a replacement bike.

But, in a bizarre twist, as he was dropping it off, he spotted Mitali’s original bike, and ran after the teenager who was riding it to confront him.

He said: “My daughter had called me really stressed and mad, because her bike had been stolen and it had disrupted her studies and routine – she couldn’t get to her faculty and library as easily as she had before.

“I offered to come down with my wife with a new bike for her, but when I was outside New Hall we saw a young man on a bike which looked just like hers.

“He was a good 100 metres away, so I ran after him along Huntingdon Road, and fortunately he stopped at some traffic lights, allowing me to catch up.

“He said he had found the bike in a bush and handed it over straight away – so I was able to return my daughter’s bike, which had a lot of sentimental value to her.”

Mitali, 21, said: “Dad ran through traffic, weaving his way across the road to reach the teenager on my bike, and I couldn’t believe I had got it back.

“It is my bike from my childhood – I did my cycling proficiency on it, and in Cambridge you grow very close to your bike because you spend so much time on it, so I was really pleased to be reunited with it.”

Published in Family and Fatherhood
See also: www.cambridge-news.co.uk