When Beau Wilson went out to his parking space at his Carter Park apartment Saturday night and saw his vintage scooter missing, he didn’t think it had been stolen.
“At first I thought it was my clubmates pulling a prank on me,” he said. “They’ve done that once or twice, moved it a block away or something.”
Wilson, 33, is a member of the Skoot & Destroy Lambretta Club, a group of classic metal-body scooter enthusiasts based in Vancouver. But on Saturday, Wilson was with one of the club members. He turned to his friend and quickly learned that the club had nothing to do with it.
Wilson reported the incident to police, letting them know that the rare scooter was stolen from the Campus Court Apartments, 202 W. Fourth Plain Blvd., sometime between 3 p.m., when Wilson parked it, and 11 p.m., when he discovered it missing.
Wilson’s neighbor saw the scooter get hauled away in the back of a truck, but didn’t think anything of it because Wilson occasionally has people pick it up to do work on it, he said. Wilson said the truck was described as a mid-’90s white compact pickup. Vancouver Police Department spokeswoman Kim Kapp said that an older white pickup is a possible suspect vehicle.
Though the scooter is valued between $3,000 and $4,000, Wilson said it’s worth much more to him. He built the white Lambretta scooter from the ground up and has used it as his daily mode of transportation for the past six years. He’s posted fliers around town and has made more than 100 Facebook posts in an attempt to find his scooter.
“Me and my friends, that’s our hobby. We get old bikes, and we make them shiny and we drive them around,” he said. “The sentimental value, the social aspect of it … it’s my baby.”
Anyone who has seen the scooter is asked to call the Vancouver Police Department at 360-487-7500.
