Bikes Recovered, Restored, Readied For Riding As Reward For Teens

TAMPA, FL — Tampa Solid Waste Department supervisor Nathan McGriff and interim supervisor Fredrick Sanders stood there looking at nearly 30 bikes that had been dropped off by a hauler at the McKay Bay Transfer Station.

It would have been easy to just haul the entire load of bikes to the tipping station floor and dump them with the tons of other debris that gets discarded every day at the transfer station.

The rule is, once it hits the tipping station floor, it can't be recovered.

But Sanders and McGriff couldn't help but notice that some of the bikes, the perfect size for teens, just needed simple repairs.

And Sanders knew just the teens who could use them.

Sanders is the founder of the nonprofit Take the Time mentoring group, which mentors Tampa teens on etiquette and exposes them to community service projects across the city.

Sanders and McGriff sorted through the collection of bikes destined for the dump and came up with 10 that just needed a little work to make them rideable. The men set them aside and, in their spare time, began repairing them.

On Friday, the two men presented the newly repaired bikes to 10 teens in the TTT group.

"This is a great way to give back to teens in need while educating them on what it means to reduce and reuse items," McGriff said. "These bikes would have made it into a landfill, but now they have found a new home."