A Cowboy Vigilante Lassoes a Bike Thief in the Beaver State

Have you guys heard about the cowboy who jumped on his horse and chased down a bike thief last Friday?

You heard me right. A guy named Robert Borba was loading dog food and camping equipment into his car when he heard a woman in the Walmart parking lot screaming that someone had just stolen her bike.

So Borba JUMPED ON HIS HORSE, Long John, to chase after the guy as he cycled away. Catching up with him, Borba then LASSOED HIM AROUND THE LEGS.

This guy (Denise Baratta/The Medford Mail Tribune via AP)

Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, the thief, tried to escape. But Borba held him tight until the police arrived to apprehend him.

“I seen this fella trying to get up to speed on a bicycle. I wasn’t going to catch him on foot. I just don’t run very fast… I use a rope every day, that’s how I make my living. If it catches cattle pretty good, it catches a bandit pretty good,” Borba said.

Which is exactly what you’d expect a cowboy to say after apprehending a bike thief.

I LOVE that he called the guy a “fella” and a “bandit.” And that he had a horse and lasso at the ready in a Walmart parking lot.It’s like something straight out of the Wild West…

Except it happened in Oregon, not Texas.

I’ve never actually been to Texas, but we non-Texans have the impression that cowboy culture is alive and well in the Lone Star State. We get that idea from things like Texas calling itself the “Lone Star State” and Remembering the Alamo.

Where some of us got our first Texas impressions

Oregon, on the other hand, conjures images closer to episodes of Portlandia. I don’t know if the rest of America knows this, but we Californians have a strange relationship with Oregon. They’re our neighbors and tend to be crunchy liberals like us (relatively speaking), but ON STEROIDS… a lot more Nader voters in 2000, for example.

How DARE you out-hipster us, Oregon?

So Californians tend to either romanticize Oregonians, moving into their lush territory in droves, or see them as granola crack.

I’ve heard Oregonians don’t care for Californians much, on the other hand, believing our invasion drives up property values. And by “don’t care for us,” I mean chase us out with pitchforks and flaming sticks.

Either way, I never pictured a Old Western style thief wrangling to go down in the Beaver State.

Fine work, boys. Fine work

Good for Robert Borbo. I think we can all agree that lassoing a bicycle thief from  horseback is mighty cool.

Hopefully, Borba celebrated his victory with a homemade slice of Miss Maybelle’s delicious apple pie before paying court to the lovely Miss Primrose on her family’s porch.