Print
Email Story
SUNNYSIDE -- 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 said 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're all pitching in at Lucky 7 Bikes, a volunteer-run shop that functions as a recycling, youth outreach and apprenticeship center.
The program allows 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," White said.
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 said
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.
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.
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.
