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Rotary Clubs and Local Organizations Bring Smiles to Kids by Gifting 250 Holiday Bikes

Published on Friday, December 13, 2019 | 5:58 am
 

The Pasadena Rotary Club, joined by the Rotary Clubs from Altadena, San Marino, and Alhambra, gave away a total of 250 bicycles Thursday to students in the Pasadena Unified School District as part of their annual Bikes for Christmas program.

The bikes were distributed to the students and their families Thursday morning at the Salvation Army Tabernacle, located at East Walnut and Mentor Avenue.

The families that received the bicycles were pre-selected by PUSD.

Purchased out of funds contributed by members of each Rotary Club chapter as well as a donation from the Huntington Hospital Foundation, the bikes were ordered in August and placed in storage until mid-November, when Rotarians and their families started assembling them for distribution.

The assembly took place at the PUSD Maintenance Facility at 740 Westbury Road on November 9.

Each of the pre-selected families also received a helmet and associated gear with the free bikes, including anti-theft locks.

Officers from the Pasadena Police Department were on hand during the distribution to make sure each bike’s serial number and the new owner’s name were recorded, in case of future theft.

Thursday’s event was the Pasadena Rotarians’ fifth Bikes for Christmas give-away. The program started in 2015 through the efforts of former Pasadena Rotary president Kathy Meagher, who approached the Huffy Bicycle Co. that year with the idea and got a good deal on the bike sourcing.

“She [Meagher] got it going,” JP Harris, one of the co-chairs of the Bikes for Christmas program, said. “We just wanted to be more involved in outreach to the community, and one of our members is the Captain at the Salvation Army in Pasadena, the Tabernacle there on Walnut [Street]. We got to think of how we could reach out and help the community, and he gave her some ideas. Through that, it sprouted into the bicycle program.”

The Altadena and San Marino Rotary Clubs joined the program in 2016 and Alhambra joined starting this year, Harris said.

The Salvation Army picks up the bikes from a warehouse in San Pedro and brings them to the PUSD Maintenance Facility, so the Rotary clubs are able to save on shipping and handling costs.

In each annual distribution event, the Rotarians, assisted by PUSD staff, Pasadena police officers and Salvation Army members, have given out anywhere from 150 to 200 bikes under the program.

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