Every mall in America lays claim each year to being an outpost of the North Pole complete with Santa and elves. Brightly colored banners are hung, Christmas carols are piped out of speakers, and every sign in every window has some holiday proclamation in it.
Displays glitter with fake snowflakes and glass baubles but have little or nothing to do with the Christmas spirit.
To see a real example of what Christmas means, go to the Town and Country Center in Danville. In a donated storefront tucked away amid the stores is Santa’s workshop come to life, albeit with some subtle differences.
The elves there aren’t rosy cheeked cherubs, drinking hot cocoa and singing merry tunes. They’re family men, some with their children helping out. They drink water, Coke or Sierra Nevada Ale and hum along with the rock station playing on the radio as they turn battered and unused bicycles into gleaming Christmas gifts.
They are the driving force behind the annual bike program through St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Danville. For the fourth year in a row, volunteers are working from early November until mid December taking in used bicycles, fixing them up, and sending them north to be given away to underprivileged residents of Contra Costa County.
Program coordinator Tania Hanson-De Young said that in the four years since the program started, they’ve seen it continue to grow.
“It started out in the basement of the church, and now it’s in this retail space donated to us by Realtor Gary Riele,” she said.
Donations have been a big factor in growing the program. Danville Bikes has given a number of items as has California Pedaler. Frames come from Pacific Rim Recycling, and the church gets a deal on Bell Helmets so each bike comes with a helmet.
Hanson-De Young said the level of work going into the bikes now is incredible.
“It’s not just fixing flat tires and putting on chains. We’ve got some real spoke-heads involved,” she noted.
Chief among the laborers is Dave Struck. Struck first got involved through a bicycle drive at his children’s school and has watched with pride as the event has drawn in more bikes and volunteers each year.
“That first year, there were older members of the parish who would come down to the basement to help,” Struck recalled. “They’d find a comfortable spot and just pump up tires as long as they could.”
Initially, it was a patch-’em-up-and-ship-’em-out operation, but now the work crews tackle nearly any issue with the bikes, from restringing brake lines to replacing derailleurs.
And if a bike is beyond repair, Struck said they still have uses for it. “Towards the end, when we’re running out of bikes, we’ll take parts off one and put it on another. We make FrankenBikes.”
Once completed, the bikes are shipped up to the Monument Crisis Center in Concord for its Adopt-A-Family Program. If any are left over, they go to the Salvation Army in Concord to be given out.
The first year the group did this, they gave away 40 bikes. Last year it was 160.
“You can never have too many bikes. There’s always a need,” Hanson-De Young said.
Monument Crisis Center Director Sandra Scherer agreed.
“Bicycles are something people can really relate to,” she said. “They need them to get to work because buses are very expensive in Contra Costa County.”
She said the bikes from St. Timothy’s have made a big difference for those who get them.
One of those recipients is Pedro, 53, a resident of Concord’s Monument Corridor. Pedro is a day laborer. Each day he rides from his apartment down to Monument Futures, where he waits with more than 80 other men to see if any jobs will be available that day.
“Having it (the bicycle) is a big help,” he said. “It becomes a big part of your life. A daily necessity.”
Pedro is now on his second bicycle through the Crisis Center. His first was stolen just two months after he received it. He said it has been a great gift and he hopes more bikes come for the other men in the neighborhood who don’t have one.
Scherer said Pedro’s reaction to the generosity of the St. Timothy’s program is the common one.
“There are some people who are just so excited to receive a bike and they are just like ‘this is the best thing I’ve ever received,'” said Scherer. “It’s overwhelming.”
For Struck and the other volunteers, stories like Pedro’s are what keep them coming back year after year.
“I think you just appreciate that a lot of these families don’t have these things. It’s really cool that we can do something to help,” said Struck.
Fellow volunteer J.P. Salgado summed up the feeling among the group.
“We’re leveraging skills we all have,” he said. “It doesn’t take a lot of effort to make a difference. A little push helps a lot of people. That’s what’s satisfying.”
Anyone who would like to help repair bikes next year can contact Dave Struck at dtarstruck@yahoo.com. Those interested in having a bike collection or helping with Adopt A Family next year can contact Tania Hanson-De Young at taniahd@sbcglobal.net.
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