LAKEWOOD — When Bret Dallas went to the shed outside of his Lakewood home to follow his routine and lift weights one October morning, the 46-year-old could not believe what he saw. Or didn’t see.
“I felt like I got hit in the gut,” Dallas said. “Because I just opened my shed and there was just empty space where everything used to be.”
Dallas has spent at least 10 years performing on the streets of Denver. In that shed were all of his tools of the busking trade including thousands of dollars worth of electric guitars, speakers and pedals. The incident reports from the Lakewood Police Department also listed stolen bikes and tools.
It was all gone. Dallas said he saw one of the shed’s side doors flailing in the wind — completely open.
“I just dropped to my knees and I just started crying,” Dallas said. “Like I could not believe this. I mean, it’s just — the amount of loss that I experienced in that moment, I just can’t, I can’t begin to describe.”
Dallas is one of the thousands of Coloradans who reported similar crimes from 2014 to 2024, according to a Colorado Sun analysis of Colorado Department of Public Safety data.
But, few cases are solved. Of the 351,283 burglary and theft from building cases, 15% have been cleared. (A clearance can include an arrest or another condition like the death of an offender or a victim that decided not to cooperate with police.)
John Romero, public information officer for the Lakewood Police Department, said these types of crimes are hard to solve — especially if there are no witnesses or surveillance footage. And it is a race to find suspects.
“For these criminals, their goal is to steal those items and get rid of them for money as quickly as they can,” he said. “That can always present an issue when you’re going through an investigation.”
Romero said criminals will try to sell stolen items to multiple pawn shops, or use Facebook Marketplace, as soon as possible to make it harder to track them down. This also makes it difficult to connect stolen goods to the thieves that took them.
Dallas began looking for his belongings — with the help of the internet. This quest would take him across metro Denver and to a motel room less than a mile from his shed where everything was stolen.
Community steps in to track down his stuff
Dallas said he posted alerts and pictures of his stolen guitars on Facebook Marketplace and elsewhere. He was not feeling optimistic. But then people who saw his posts sent him listings of guitars that looked a lot like his for sale at two local music shops.
Dallas said he was grateful that people did some sleuthing on his behalf.
“That’s how this all started,” he said. “I’m not sure I would have actually done that level of research, but they did.”
Gravity Music Gear listed Dallas’ stolen Carvin AE185 guitar for sale, and Music Go Round in Littleton listed Dallas’ Squier John 5 Signature Telecaster for sale.
“At first I just thought, ‘OK well what are the chances?’” Dallas said. “I mean, these thieves are very sophisticated. There’s no way they’re dumb enough to go and pawn these off to retailers that require identification, but they were.”
The stores returned the items that had not been sold to Dallas after police verified ownership.
“I felt amazing,” Dallas said.
Dan Biehl, general manager at Music-Go-Round, said the store verifies sellers a few different ways before they buy any equipment from them. They monitor via security cameras, take a fingerprint, copy identification and note the serial numbers of any gear.
“We’re super careful,” Biehl said. “We collect all the information of the seller. So as long as they’re not using a fake ID, then we have all their information. Including a fingerprint.”
Kino, a Gravity Music Gear employee who answered the phone and declined to give their last name, said on the phone that they remembered the guitar in question. They said the business checked for the instrument in a police database and it came back clean.
Gravity Music Gear has a similar process where they also check the seller’s ID and make them sign a form that the merchandise is theirs to sell.
“We follow the law,” Kino said. “We do all the procedures that are required of us. That’s all we can really do.”
Colorado law requires pawnbrokers to take similar steps to log sellers and details of the goods that they purchased.
Dallas said he felt encouraged by the recovery of his guitars. But then thieves struck again.
Another burglary despite security measures
Dallas said after the first break-in he added security cameras, bolts and locks on his shed and nearby gate. With those precautions, he said he felt better.
“I’m beginning to feel safe,” he said.
A brief snippet of security camera footage shared by Dallas with The Sun showed the grainy image of someone entering the near-empty shed. They are wearing gloves, boots and long pants while holding a pry bar.
Days after the initial break-in, Dallas said another theft occurred. A duffel bag full of family mementos, a bike, ladder and a tent were stolen.
“I had done everything I thought I could do in the wake of this to re-secure my property,” Dallas said. “I even decided I felt good enough to put one of my bikes back in that shed. Well, that bike is now gone.”
Dallas said this was enough to make him look into selling the house. He no longer felt safe there.
“Seeing that man standing there with a pry bar in his hand, knowing that the first thing he did was grab the camera off the wall and then go to work stealing all my stuff again, I cannot explain the kind of violation that I feel,” Dallas said. “I just — it is indescribable. It is, it’s rage filled with anger, filled with frustration.”
A cache of allegedly stolen goods
Dallas needed to replace his stolen ladder and started looking on Facebook Marketplace.
“I found a listing of someone selling a ladder just like the one that was stolen from me here in Lakewood,” Dallas said. “And, I got curious and I started poking around on this guy’s profile, and he’s selling some other stuff too. And lo and behold, some of my other gear is listed under his for-sale listings.”
Dallas decided to set up a time to meet with the person who listed the ladder and went half a mile down the block to a motel room to buy it. When he got there, the seller said the ladder was already sold. But he could not believe what else he saw.
“I drove over there to the motel, and I walked into his room and, and it was wall-to-wall packed with stolen equipment,” Dallas said. “This is eerie.”
Dallas saw his bike among other items crammed into the room alongside a pressure washer, weed whackers and power tools.
“There’s stolen equipment as far as the eye can see in this little motel room,” he said.
The video shows Dallas perusing the motel room. He eventually bought a tool box and a suitcase for $50.
“When I got home, I pulled the information tag off that luggage,” Dallas said. “You know how sometimes luggage can have a little slip where there’s an information tag? Well, my information was on that tag.”
The Colorado Sun is not naming the other man in the video because he has not been charged with a crime.
The man said in the video that he was selling everything: “Cleaning out my storage.”
Dallas said it was difficult to maintain his composure in that motel room and not be able to hold this man accountable immediately.
“Everything in me wanted to exact vigilante justice, but I just knew I had to keep it cool,” he said.
The Colorado Sun was present when the Lakewood Police Department went back to the motel room the next day to go through the items. Dallas was called to identify his things and police recovered two of his bikes.
Romero, the Lakewood police spokesperson, said he would not recommend people following Dallas’ example because it could lead to them being victimized again.
“Anytime you would follow up with something like this in person yourself as the victim, you’re putting yourself in danger, ” he said. “And that’s the last thing we want.”
Romero said people should call the detective assigned to their case to let them know of any new information. This could help police make an arrest instead of risking someone’s safety.
Dallas said he felt empowered by everything he did to recover his stuff.
“I feel a sense of pride too because I’m proud of what I’ve done, you know, to restore kind of a little bit of what was lost here,” he said.
Dallas said he felt relief, satisfaction and a sense of justice after he spent weeks tracking down his things.
“I’m really glad I didn’t give up thinking that this was lost and gone forever,” he said.
Romero said the Lakewood Police Department has not arrested anyone yet.
“It is a very active investigation,” Romero said. “We are following up on several leads. We do have some suspects that we are looking into. But no arrests have been made in either of these cases as of yet.”
The man who was arrested was taken into custody for an unrelated warrant, according to police.
When a reporter for The Colorado Sun knocked on the door of that motel room, a woman in a black jacket and a tie-dyed Buccee’s shirt answered the door. She said she was the roommate and friend of the man who sold items out of the room. She insisted that she did not have anything to do with the stolen goods.
Now, things will be harder for her.
“But I am stressed out right now,” she said. “Because, he’s in jail, and I have to pay for the room, and it’s like $80 a day. It’s not cheap, you know. And I have to find a friend to help me out, you know. Because it’s hard to have money every day at 10 o’clock.”
The rent in metro Denver has dropped slightly on average recently but is still around $1,816 per month.
A gap in insurance means the loss could have hit harder
Dallas said part of what motivated him to go looking for his belongings was a denial from his insurance company. The rejection was allegedly because the theft happened at a shed and not his home.
“I’ve got exactly zero payout from insurance on any of this,” he said. “So, you know that hurts too. You know, I guess part of me thought that I would have some kind of coverage in this kind of situation. But as it turns out, I don’t.”
Insurance documents shared by Dallas with The Sun showed the American Modern Property and Casualty Insurance Company rejected Dallas’ claim on Oct. 23.
“After review, your policy does not cover loss due to theft, since it is not a named peril and is excluded,” an unnamed representative for the company wrote.
The company did not immediately return a request for comment but did acknowledge request.
Carole Walker, the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said she was surprised by this denial. She said she cannot speak to the specifics of Dallas’ case but that usually homeowners insurance will cover all structures on one’s property. Walker said storage units away from the home need separate insurance policies.
“Generally, a standard homeowner’s insurance policy does cover you for theft as a named peril,” Walker said. “It’s a typical coverage. And so if you get your house broken into and something is stolen, you do have coverage for that.”
Walker said she recommends that everyone understand what their homeowner policy does and does not cover — and work to identify for themselves if they have enough coverage to replace their items if something happens to them. People may need to add extra coverage, known as an endorsement, if there are particularly expensive items that are worth more than their policy.
“People just don’t think about it, unfortunately, until it’s too late,” Walker said. “And then you realize you don’t have enough coverage to replace those, you know, valuable items.”
Walker said there can be caps to how much an insurance company will reimburse for electronics or valuables without additional coverage. Her recommendation for people is to take pictures and videos of their belongings, alongside receipts, and send them to their insurance agent to make sure they get enough coverage.
Walker said extra insurance may not cost a lot on the front end, but could be a problem without it.
“But you really do have to consider whether you could replace those items out of pocket if you don’t have either enough insurance coverage or any insurance coverage on them,” she said.
Even insurance would not be able to help Dallas track down one of his most prized possessions — a duffel bag full of pictures and mementos from his deceased mother and childhood. It was stored in his shed.
“If I could find out which dumpster he threw it in, I would dive in that dumpster tomorrow, I don’t care, even at the slightest chance of getting that back,” Dallas said.
Dallas said police recovered more of his tools from a storage unit tied to a suspect in the case, but that his duffel bag was found empty. Dallas said he is saddened by the development.
“They threw away my pictures and mementos,” Dallas said in text messages. “At least I have closure.”