SAN FRANCISCO -- A homeless man in West Oakland found the 122-year-old bell stolen from St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco covered in tarps in a field near the port.

The 2.7-ton bell was stolen sometime over the past month, possibly by metal thieves, police said. A man called a San Francisco police tip line to say that he had found the bell in a field near the intersection of Ninth and Pine streets in West Oakland, next to Interstate 880.

On Wednesday, police Inspector Brian Danker, who this year tracked down a $23,000 violin stolen from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, drove to Oakland hoping the tip was legitimate.

"We opened a sliding door on the (Interstate 880) sound wall and we saw these blue and yellow and green, brown tarps," Danker said. "All these tarps were piled up, about the size of the bell. I knew we'd found it."

The bell was lifted off the ground on two wooden railroad ties, across the street from a salvage yard.

"I guess it was a pretty messy industrial area," said George Wesolek, communications director for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. "It was a salvage yard, so we're glad we found it when we did. It might have been just minutes or hours from being destroyed."

The bell was cast in 1889 by a Baltimore bell foundry. It hung in the original St. Mary's Cathedral on Van Ness Avenue and O'Farrell Street until the cathedral burned down. The bell was replaced by an electronic chime and moved to a quiet corner of the current cathedral's property at Geary Boulevard and Gough Street.

A parishioner noticed the bell was missing before Mass on Sunday, and the church notified police.

Metal thieves probably stole the bell to melt it and sell the copper, Danker said.

"Nothing is sacred. They are an unscrupulous group," Danker said of the metal thieves.

A police tow truck drove across the bridge from San Francisco and will haul the bell to an undisclosed, secure location, Danker said.

Police will also question the owners of the nearby salvage yard, Danker said.

"We are really happy. This is a mini-miracle," Wesolek said.

The man who called in the tip will get an undisclosed reward from the cathedral. He read about the missing bell in the newspaper, Danker said.

"I want to pay it out of my own pocket," Danker said. "But I'm not allowed to do that."

Wesolek said the church will probably return the bell to its original home in a secluded corner of the cathedral.

"But it'll be better secured," Wesolek said.