Re-cycling offers alternative to gangs

 
SUNNYSIDE, Wash. — Don’t give George Villalobos a hacksaw.

The 13-year-old bike mechanic-in-training might try to use it to remove a crusty tire from the rim of a road bike.

“That would make it more simple,” he says through his grunts, as he pries at the bead with tire levers and a screwdriver.

Elsewhere in the unheated downtown garage, boys sort spokes, push brooms and grease bearings.

They are all pitching in at Lucky 7 Bikes, a volunteer-run shop that functions as a recycling, youth outreach and apprenticeship center.

A product of communitywide gang prevention efforts, the program works by allowing kids to select a salvaged bike and refurbish it under the tutelage of unofficial manager Dan White and other mentors. In turn, the students contribute about five hours helping other kids, sweeping and cleaning parts.

Or removing stubborn tires.

Technically, Villalobos is breaking the rules even with the screwdriver, as he could dent or score the rim. But the extreme tire rot calls for extreme measures, so White allows it after grabbing the hacksaw away from his do-things-the-quick-and-dirty-way student.

“No saw for you,” says White.

White, an affable, between-jobs handyman from Grandview, enjoys fixing up old bikes and is trying to spread that feeling to his students.

“There’s a lot of satisfaction in doing that,” he says.

The 55-year-old White was repairing bikes for kids long before Lucky 7 started. It began when he fished a bicycle out of the Yakima River and fixed it up. He still rides it today.

But the hobby grew into something more in September, when he lost his job as an area manager for a local fuel company. He began purchasing bikes and parts at thrift stores and digging them out of the garbage. Friends from his Mormon church began donating, and he ended up with as many as 30 rebuilt bikes in his garage. When a local church heard of a kid in need, it came to him.

Meanwhile, months earlier, Sunnyside residents desperate to stem a rising tide of gang violence had started holding weekly brainstorming sessions. During one of those sessions, Ann Bardell and Dina Bootsma thought of the need for bike repairs after hearing about a single dad’s struggles to keep his children’s bikes in working order.

Results from a 2006 Washington Healthy Youth Survey found that 21 percent of sixth-grade students in Sunnyside didn’t own a bike. The statewide average is about 10 percent.

Bardell recalls there were efforts to stage a few weekend bicycle workshops, but something always fell through.

Then the women heard about White and asked for his help. About the same time, the Sunnyside Grace Brethren Church offered its empty shop on Seventh Street, hence the name Lucky 7.

The Sunnyside Police Department donated many of the bikes, surplus from unclaimed stolen property. The group also received a donation from the Seattle Bike Alliance, which collects unclaimed bikes left on bus racks. The shop now has about 100 bikes in various states of disrepair.

The shop opened mid-October to a throng of 66 kids, almost all middle-school-aged boys.

“We were overwhelmed,” White says.

Organizers lined them up and took 20 or so at a time. Several more have been added to a waiting list. A couple of the 14 or so who have graduated — they’ve finished their own bikes and have contributed their five hours — return frequently to help for fun.

“It’s filling a very valuable need in our community,” says Phil Schenck, deputy chief of the Sunnyside Police Department.

The program has about 13 volunteers, but organizers want more. In fact, they want more of everything: tools, bikes and money.

So far, most of the tools are White’s own, though community members have been donating them, too.

White really needs work stands; he built two out of plastic pipe and improvises two others by hanging trunk-mounted car racks from the wall. Neither method holds bikes steady under aggressive wrenching.

Sunnyside’s Promise, a youth-oriented outreach nonprofit, has been paying for insurance for the project.

But the group, which recently received a $100,000 Gates Foundation grant through the Yakima Valley Community Foundation, has numerous goals in mind, says Mark Baysinger, executive director.

Among those ideas are reopening the city’s community center, shuttered last year by City Council members during budget cutting; building soccer fields near the police station; and bringing an amateur boxing club to town.

Nonprofit bike programs are nothing new.

Shops in Boise, Idaho, and Portland function as recycling centers and provide rebuilt bikes for commuters. A shop in Sioux City, S.D., got national attention with “Cash for Two-wheeled Clunkers,” a bike exchange that mimicked President Barack Obama’s car program.

In New Jersey, Pedals for Progress has shipped more than 5,000 used bikes overseas and helped establish community-owned shops in those countries to sell them.

“There’s lots of different nonprofit organizations that do things like this,” says Meghan Cahill, a spokeswoman for the League of American Bicyclists, a Washington, D.C., bike advocacy group.

Closer to home, the Yakima Lions Club fixes up bikes and donates them to area children through Boy Scout troops, churches and the Union Gospel Mission. Every year, the club sets a budget for the project and uses the money to buy parts from Valley Cycle. The volunteers have given away more than 1,000 bikes in the past nine years, says Marion Blank, a 30-year Lions member.

Jeff Clark, a co-owner of Revolution Cycles in Yakima, has heard of neighborhoods helping children with their bikes, but nothing organized. He likes the idea.

“It’s getting kids to help other kids as an anti-gang effort,” Clark says. “It’s worth a shot.”

Bob Taylor, owner of Wild Wheels bike shop in Granger, lauded the idea, too.

He does some of the same outreach unofficially in his shop. Taylor also is known in the Lower Valley for staging bike shows and solicits donations to avoid charging entry fees. He also has rebuilt bikes for the state’s foster children program.

Kids generally want to learn, but some just want free stuff, he says. Taylor has learned to tell the difference since coming to the Yakima Valley in 1968. He has seen some kids try to patch flat tires with Band Aids and duct tape.

Taylor advises the Sunnyside group, more than anything, to stick with it.

“I just hope they don’t get tired of it,” he says. “It’s not something they can do for two years. It’s important for it to be there for the kids.”

Organizers of Lucky 7 have the same goal.

“I think our long range (goal) is to keep it going,” says Ann Bardell.

Sadly, the group must close shop for the winter because the church garage is not heated. Thursday is the last day. They hope to reopen in March with a bike swap to act as a fundraiser and bike collection point for the program.

On a recent day, White looked over the Sierra Vista Middle School student’s refurbished bike, a chrome BMX that long ago lost its decals and other indicators of brand to rust and wear. He inspected it by bouncing it, shaking it and giving the brakes a few hard squeezes.

“Cool! You’re done,” White tells Villalobos, marking the occasion with a hand slide and fist bump.

The boy asks, “What do I do now?” White gives him some chores, including removing a tire and finding a replacement seat for a mountain bike on one of the stands.

Villalobos smiles and tackles his duties with an “Okey-dokey” for his mentor.

He says he enjoys the work and appreciates his rebuilt bike more than the one he threw away several years ago after it rusted over and quit working.

“I just have a different feeling,” Villalobos says. “I’m actually working for a bike instead of paying for one.”

• Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.