Vietnam Veteran, double-amputee's custom hand bike stolen from driveway

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) - The search is on for a Vietnam Veteran's custom hand bike that was stolen late Saturday afternoon from his driveway in Southeast Portland.

The theft happened sometime in a 1.5-hour window as Brian Willson went inside to get lunch.

"(I) came out before 4 p.m. to do another errand and it was gone. I just had to sit down for a second and think, okay, what am I going to do now?" Willson, told KATU News.

Willson is a double-amputee and relies on the hand bike (pictured above in a photo by Jonathan Maus of bikeportland.org) to get around. To really understand the importance of the cycle, you have to go back about 30-years to a peaceful protest gone awry.

Brian Willson was 46 then, changed, he says, by his experiences serving in Vietnam, he had propelled himself into political activism. On September 1, 1987 he was protesting the movement of emission, by train, out of the Naval Weapons Station in Concord, CA.

"It was protocol. It was standard. This has happened many times.They always stop the train. People were arrested and I figured I might have gone to jail for a year," Wilson said. So, what happened on September 1, 1987 -- the train didn't stop. It sped up to 17 miles an hour -- Three times the speed limit and I went under the train."

Willson broke 19 bones, fractured his skull and lost both of his legs.

Now 75, that dedication to activism has stuck with him in both big and small ways. One way was his custom hand bike, which up until Saturday, along with being his way of protesting the use of fossil fuels, was also his primary mode of transportation.

"When I discovered hand cycling in 1997, it completely changed my life. All of a sudden, I was active again. I was like a little teenager cycling around," Willson continued.

In the last several years, Willson estimates he has racked up at least 75,000 miles on the bike and completed a handful of marathons including both famed Boston and New York Marathons.

Wilson recently added an electric assist to the bike, which added value and added reason for the thieves to lift the bike The avid cycler says the bike is not the type of bike someone could ride off with as it is pretty heavy, especially with the electric assist, and requires some familiarity with how to use a hand bike.

The 75-year-old filed a police report and has reported the bike stolen on the Bike Index. He has also kept an account of all serial numbers. Anyone with information is asked to contact Portland Police.