Belong & Contribute
Just being a kid
7-12
Boy Rebuilds Junk Bikes, Then Gives Them to Children
Photo and reporting by
The Christian Science Monitor
Justin bought a junk bike at 10, fixed it up until it looked new, then kept collecting old ones just because he liked doing it. Two years later, after two boys at a group home tried to hand their new bikes back thinking they were only borrowed, he set himself a deadline: every kid there, all 20 of them, would have his own bike by Christmas.
The parent picked up a hammer too
His dad had already been fixing bikes in the garage for years and let Justin watch and take things apart himself. His mom drove him to garage sales and helped him track down parts, but the deadline, the tally, the whole thing was his.
Why we picked this one
Nobody handed Justin a curriculum in bike mechanics or a lesson about generosity. He had a garage, a dad who fixed things in it, and one afternoon where a kid tried to give a bike back because he didn't believe it was really his to keep. Twelve years old and the number that mattered to him wasn't 40, it was 20, because that's how many kids were waiting.
Justin needed three or four dead bikes just to build one good one, and nobody was keeping score but him. A birdhouse only takes an afternoon and a saw. Build it, mount it somewhere it'll actually get used, then don't check on it every day, just see who moves in.
Read the full story at
The Christian Science Monitor
Where it happened:
Saddle Brook, N.J.
Somewhere near your garage there's a bike nobody's ridden since last summer, tires gone soft, still fine underneath. Justin didn't start with a plan to fix 40 of them, he started because one kid at a group home tried to hand a bike back, thinking it was only a loan.