Give a Man a Bike

Every time Petaluma resident Dick Allen drove by the Shell station on Washington and Howard and saw day laborers waiting, his heart would break a little.

“The way we’ve treated Latin America, dumping corn on them so farmers can’t even make a living and have to sneak into the U.S. to get jobs, is horrible,” says Allen, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, referring to the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement, implemented in 1994 and which flooded Mexico with cheap corn produced in the United States.

Concerned about the plight of day laborers, most of who have to walk or take the bus to get around, Allen put out a call among his neighbors for used bicycles.

“I would notice bikes laying around in people’s storage, just collecting dust and all they needed was a little DW-40,” he says.

Allen got seven right away and then another seven from his congregation, the .

“Here are poor people who are walking from the eastside to the westside just to wait for a job. A bike is so simple, but can transform someone’s life, at least transportation wise,” he says.

Allen is 72 and a former sales engineer in the construction industry and has worked in commercial real estate. But he got turned onto a lifetime of volunteerism when, like thousands of other youth, he answered John F. Kennedy’s call for service by becoming a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador in 1964.

“Outside having children, it was the most significant thing I have done in my life,” he says.

Since then, Allen has gone on to do many volunteer projects in Honduras, Nicaragua and in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Allen says collecting and donating the bikes is an easy way to make an impact and he wants the idea to grow, in congregations, among neighbors and in schools.

“Giving someone a bike is like Christmas, just the goodness of it," he says. "Day laborers don’t experience the goodness of the English speaking middle class, but discrimination and largely just being ignored. They may not be legal, but they’re still human beings.”