A beautiful story of a Ravensdale man who fixes up old bikes and gives them out to children in need, will blow you away.
For Brad Belcher, Monday mornings are usually spent combing through forgotten bicycles at the King County Surplus Warehouse.
Here bicycles that commuters leave on the bus are brought to the SODO warehouse, to be claimed. If no one claims them within 10 days, then the bikes are up for grabs for folks.
“I’ve seen a $2,000 bike here. I don’t know how you forget that on a bus!” he said.
That is surely a gain for Belcher and he gets to work fixing up these two-wheelers to help his mission.
At his garage, in Ravensdale, southeast of Maple Valley, he is busy restoring bikes which are gathered up from the surplus warehouse or given out to him by the community for the lower income kids.
His mission is “Bicycle Rescue for Youth” which started when Belcher noticed bikes that several bikes were being given away for free on Craiglist.
“I was thinking someone should do something with those bike,” he said.
He then passes them out to local organizations like Convington Rotary and Maple Valley Food Bank to be distributed to needy kids in east King County.
Belcher has seen poverty as a kid and he knows firsthand what the gift of a bike means.
“It’s a sense of freedom, a sense of normalcy,” he said.
Belcher is a retired design mechanic who worked at Boeing for 36 years. At present he works on bike 5 days a week, 6 hours a day.
“I have to be doing something, so this fits right in with my personality,” he said.
Now Belcher is looking out for a larger facility to carry out his work on the bikes, as his garage is falling short for him now.
He wants to raise enough money so that he can repair 30 bikes in time for the holidays.
This is such a novel way of giving back to the community, we salute you Mr Belcher.
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