Featured Volunteer: David Leavens

Yvette with David Leavens...all smiles!

These crazy cats have been supporting our work for more than a decade, but they've only recently joined us in the warehouse and boy are we sad about all the fun years we missed wrenching bikes side by side. They aren't with us every week, they have very busy social calendars, and we don't always get the full team, but we are thankful to have whoever, whenever.

They all started together working on compacting bikes for upcoming shipments. It's usually overwhelming on a Thursday night, as we typically get a big shipment of bikes in that wipes out the allusion of progress...we typically 'break even'. So as our afternoon volunteer Ron makes huge progress on the pile of bikes, Glenn will pull up with a truck load more just as Ron is ready to call it a day. Making it seem like he has accomplished....nothing. That's when David Leavens makes an appearance. More recently it's just been Judy compacting bikes, but even she helps knock back that pile of bikes solo.

Doug has moved over to the shop, where he has been working alongside Todd and other volunteers to help harvest spare parts for upcoming shipments. And Ivan, he flip flops between jobs...when he's not actually working for real! This summer we had to muddle through without Ivan as he worked with a group called PedalHeads where he helped spread the joy of biking by teaching kids how to ride a bike. Kudos to Ivan for packing his patience and running alongside random errant six year olds. For us, Ivan is a big help whichever room he works

This family has seen the difference bikes can make in someone's life from Costa Rica to Africa. They also bike together as a family and try to incorporate the activity into their vacations. They are always eager to help and inquisitive about the next shipment and how the partner will benefit from the bikes. We really couldn't ask for a better team than David Leavens.