In a minivan with the rear seats ripped out, John is chasing one of his 250 electric scooters down a California highway. He finds it 10 miles away, hiding in a bush—a run-and-dump tactic that he says thieves use to test whether anyone will come after them before they take a scooter home. John, not his real name, always gives chase, because his livelihood depends on it. “If I come in too soft, then they say, ‘Oh, this guy, he's a pussy. I could kick his ass.’ So I have to be a little aggressive,” says John, who is well past the age where it’s safe to fist-fight. He spends the next hour hunting down other scooters from his fleet that…
