This is KPBS Midday Edition. I am Maureen Cavanaugh. Have you looked at pilot abandoned bicycles? Some people may see junk or environmental hazard. My next guest Kimball Taylor has focused many years on stories about the surf -- surfing life. This time investigates the tales behind the abandoned bicycles in the Tijuana River trail -- River Valley and leads to rags to riches story across the border. Author of coyote Mac -- "The Coyote's Bicycle The Untold Story of 7,000 Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire" . When did you first come across this? It was about 2007, 2008. And where were they? In the the Tijuana River Valley, across the border. It's very rural and has a long history of horse, thoroughbred racing and ranching. And when you say bicycles, how many bikes? I heard there are thousands, right? There were significant piles at various ranches along that stretch and even allowing -- down at border state park. Kind of bikes were they? Every bike you can imagine. The nice ones tended to be off very quickly. All used very -- used by schools and average bikes. These bikes been used by people entering US illegally? Around that time I received a series of assignments on Landgraf issues in Baja and environmental issues. It was done in the Tijuana River Valley actually looking at used car tires that wash across the Tijuana River into the United States every year during winters like this. And I was talking to a rancher who was busy collecting all the car tires off of his property. We were talking about the circularity of this event because most of those tires had originated in the United States. He said it's just like the bicycles. I asked him what he was talking about. He said right around here. We walked from the barn and there was a huge pile of bicycles. I asked where they came from. He turned and pointed up the hill to the border Highlands. Tijuana is about 300 feet higher than the valley below. He pointed right at that help. And I just looked at him. He said yeah, the Mexicans. He said they come down the hill and dump them. You found out that most of the bikes don't come from Mexico either? A lot of the bicycles had stickers and shop emblems and sticker of sales at auction on them that originated in cities all over the Southwest from Dallas to Los Angeles. Hundred the cyclers get them? Are they sold into Mexico? No they would come across an they had organization where they would buy bicycles in lots at police auctions and take them across the border to Tijuana. By with the migrants who use them to enter the country abandon them? Why not use them in the US? Will it was a very quick organized operation. They had pickup drivers called live on tones that would meet them and pick them up and deliver them. A major story is about the coyote, tell us about that. I became obsessed with the bicycles themselves. So I started researching where they were going and where they had come from. There was very interesting facets about bicycles that make them almost liquid in our economy. While I was looking into that, I had to eventually find out that they came across the border in such numbers. So I started meeting border people, environmentalists and activists of all stripes. The eventually started meeting people who worked in crossing tried. In the crossing trade, do you mean people who help people entered the country illegally? What do they have to tell you about L Indeo? You can imagine that that business operates because people don't talk, or shouldn't talk. So that was very difficult. But the thing that made it possible, really, is the bicycles. So many ways of crossing are so dangerous and tragic and have different elements. But when I talked to migrants who cross via bicycle they would laugh and say I wish I could do that all the time. I talked to one migrant who said his bicycle was so nice that he thought about not even crossing. He wanted to keep the bike. So just the essence of a bicycle and its relationship to childhood made people more willing to talk about this operation been I think anybody else would. The people who use rope ladders, or cross via jet ski, or tunnels, no one would talk about that. That's not really fun. But when you bring up icicles they slept there late and want to talk about it. The other thing is when I got to Tijuana and started meeting the right people, this figure who rose to prominence in the smuggling community had vanished. And you are speaking about L Indeo? Yes. And one of the things that made him so fascinating was the fact that he became a -- by all accounts -- a multimillionaire. Yes. That is based on the numbers. Smugglers claim that they cross 7000 people via bike. The price they were charging was $4500 per person. That comes to $31 million, I believe. Yes. He became a multimillionaire. How did you figure out that the bicycles would be a safer -- and a sense of nondetectable way of crossing rather than crossing on foot or some other way? I don't want to give away the premise of the book. But there are some technical elements. We're talking about a stretch of the border that is historically had every technology that the border -- patrol can bring to bear on it. One element is seismic sensors. There are 18,000 seismic sensors in the ground along the border. By seismic how we're talking about shaking -- urged the -- earth shaking things. I had been told that they have to be calibrated because of roads and other traffic and also a tumbleweed, if it was sensitive enough, might trip it. They did not detect rolling things. The border patrol needs to roll through that area. Cars pass and all that. One theory was that the bikes enrolled, they didn't walk and run as migrants traditionally do. And they didn't set off the sensors, as much at least? Yes. No many coyotes or despise because they don't care about the People's Money, what about L Indeo? What did you find out about that? By the time I got on his trail, he had almost become a Robin Hood. There are so many stories about him and his generosity that it was sometimes hard to believe. Also, it was something I struggled with his so many crossing stories are tragic, deaths in the desert and people being abused by their coyotes and taken advantage of, people run by bandits on the side of the border. It was so hard for me to drive the fun who cross via bicycle and the stories that are in the newspapers and the literature that we arty have. And you say L Indeo has disappeared? Yes he disappeared. Do we have any speculations where he might be at this point? Yes in the book. There is some revelation. Now you follow the trail bikes that were abandon at the border, what happened to some of those bicycles? Some ended up in some various curious places? Yes as I mentioned there are a couple things about the bicycle that make them a very interesting vehicle for studying how items flow through the economy. They are both the item desired and the way to get it away. So if you steal a bike, you are getting the thing you want to steal and the vehicle to take it away. And bicycles are fundable, once a dollar leisure hand, it joins the dollars, when a bike leisure hand, it joins the sea bicycles. They can be tracked, they just aren't. We know was made, we know where the dollar was made. But there is no government run national registry for bicycle numbers. Bicycles are one of the most stolen items that we possess. The common idea is that ne'er-do-wells and drug dealers or drug sellers or addicts are stealing bicycles to fuel their habit. When you look at the statistics that the FBI puts out and others, we realize that we are all stealing each other's bicycles. Joyrides are the biggest portion of bicycle thefts. It moves -- a bicycle Moser our economy in astounding ways. You follow the trail of some of these bikes to a movie set didn't you? Yes there are production center buying bicycles he dumped on the border. They were at the time contracting to various branches of the military to build these fake Afghan and Iraqi villages that they were constructing it facilities all over the country. That is a weird kind of place for these bicycles to end up. Oh, yes. In that way they were ending up in some critical -- incredible industrial situations. They were donated to Donovan prison in San Diego and there was a long-standing program were they were being purchased and donated to children. They were getting caught up in auctions and sold to the public. I was starting to realize that these bicycles were moving through the most powerful institutions that we have in government and I was really curious about that aspect about it as well. You got very involved in the whole esoteric idea of these abandoned bicycles. When did you think this could be a book? Well, I thought it was an interesting article for so long. It wasn't until I started to learn the story of L Indeo who was a young man who came from Oaxaca and arrived at the border with almost nothing. He arrived with the idea of being with his family. When I started to learn about his rise in the business and his local fame in Tijuana and his disappearance, I realized there was much more to the story. Kimball Taylor will be speaking about his book the coyotes bicycle in La Jolla tomorrow night. Kimball, thank you so much. Thank you.
While reporting on a story about thousands of car tires floating in the Tijuana River from Mexico into the United States during rainstorms, Kimball Taylor happened upon another curious phenomenon: piles of abandoned bicycles in the Tijuana River Valley near the border.
While some people might have seen the bikes as junk or a potential environmental hazard, Taylor saw a mystery to unravel and stories to tell. His investigation eventually lead him to an improbable rags to riches story, which he tells in a new book, "The Coyote's Bicycle — The Untold Story of 7,000 Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire."
Taylor will be speaking about "The Coyote's Bicycle" at Warwick's Books, at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 24, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla.
