BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
STARKE— The owner of a Melrose bicycle shop told the Starke Rotary Club that he is on a mission to make sure every Lake Region child that wants a bike has one.
“If you come into my shop, and you’ve got a kid who wants a bike, I will give them one free,” Pete Slaymaker told the club, “and it’s not just a piece of junk. It’s not going to have rust on it. We’ve refurbished that bike all the way from the ground up and it’s a good bike.”
Slaymaker said his Bikes-4-Kids program furnishes two-wheelers to children regardless of income, whether someone drives up to his shop in an AMG Mercedes or a beat-up pickup.
He does, however, draw the line at children when they reach driving age.
“At that point, you need to have a job,” he said. “You can go out and you can buy a BMX. I’m a firm believer that if you want something at that age, go work for it, but the kids, that’s a whole different story.”
Slaymaker said he and his wife Anne use the profits from their bike shop to fund the outreach.
“We’re a top-quality bicycle shop as well,” he said. “I am a retired engineer. My job when I was in industry was to set up assembly lines to build products. So, I kind of got a good handle on how to put things together. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
Lake Area Bike is located on County Road 21B, across the street from Santa Fe Lake.
Slaymaker explained he and Anne’s neighborhood-focused shop also does repairs at a fair price, with a focus on the community.
“We believe that running a business simply for the sake of accumulating wealth, just for making money is not a healthy way to run a business in a small town,” he said. “We’re not saying that profit is an ugly, four-letter word. A profit is necessary to be able to make it go, okay? But we’re not trying to make enough money to afford that new electric Mercedes-Benz or build an empire here.”
Looking for bikes
Slaymaker said the shop’s Bike-4-Kids community outreach has given away 101 bikes since December 2020.
He added that the supply of used bikes in the Keystone Heights area is drying up, so he is looking for more people willing to contribute to the mission.
Slaymaker added that church groups like Immanuel Anglican Church and the St. Matthew Catholic Church Knights of Columbus have been a big help.
Also assisting with the average of the $50 that it takes to refurbish a bike is the Bradford County Health Department, which provides the outreach with a brochure and new bike helmets. Keystone’s Carquest supplies lubricants and solvents like WD-40, and Nick’s Scrap Removal hauls away bike parts that the outreach cannot use.
Slaymaker said the restoration process starts with the frame, and then the bike is completely reassembled.
Much of the time, the restoration requires new tires and a seat, a chain and grips.
“I’ve probably spent several thousand dollars just on bicycle tires this year alone,” he said.
Good from a loss
Pete and Anne started the outreach in memory of their son, Zach who died in May 2020.
“His loss affected so many people,” the bike shop owner said.
“But from his loss we have created the Lake Area Bike-4-Kids, and so from the loss, we’ve developed something good.”
The retired engineer added that he and Anne consider every child they give a bike to as an adopted grandchild.
“Our son’s gone,” he said. “We will never have any grandchildren, so we decided to adopt all the kids in the area, so we get a little bit of a taste of being that grandparent.”
