Bikers, Friends Rally to Aid Injured Cycle Shop Owner

The 38 Harley Davidsons were parked in a row outside the Reseda rock ‘n’ roll club, a half-block line of chrome and metal-flake conformity.

Inside, just past the doorman in the Hell’s Angels vest, sat the nonconformists--the bikers--listening to a band play oldies and raising their glasses to someone who couldn’t be there.

Although the letters of Alfred Parco’s name were the biggest on the marquee outside the Country Club, he was not there. The 29-year-old part-owner of a North Hollywood motorcycle shop was in a Burbank hospital, his body attached to a machine helping him breathe.

Parco has been at St. Joseph Medical Center since mid-December, when his Harley with the red flames painted on the gas tank crashed into a car that turned in front of him. The accident crushed his spine and left him paralyzed.

It also left him with growing medical bills. The driver who turned in front of him had no insurance and Parco’s own coverage was minimal, his friends and family said.

Benefit for Little Al

So Sunday, Parco’s friends from grade school, business, local motorcycle clubs--from a lifetime in the San Fernando Valley--turned out for a benefit for the man many call “Little Al.” About 400 people paying $12.50 apiece crowded into the music hall by the 4 p.m. show time to hear a variety of music and comedy acts that had donated time for the cause.

“As Little Al would say, ‘Let’s Party!’ ” someone called into the microphone, and the music started.

The setting was an odd confluence of bikers in leather vests, businessmen in suits, women in skin-tight jeans and conservative dresses.

“Al is the type of guy that when you become his friend, you are a friend for life,” said Lisa Dowdall, a childhood acquaintance who helped promote the benefit. “Having all these different kinds of people here shows that.”

Parco belongs to no motorcycle club, but through his shop, Hog Wild, knows members of most clubs in the Valley. That translated Sunday into a rare mixer of members of the local clubs:

Disciples of Death

A group of Hell’s Angels lined the back of the rock club, while a larger entourage of The Tribe staked out a section of tables in the center. A man with a gray ponytail hanging over the back of his El Forasteros vest sat with friends to the side. A man in a Disciples of Death vest watched from a wheelchair.

There was more leather in the club than in a good-size cattle herd, enough long hair and Rip Van Winkle beards to conjure up the ‘60s. First prize in a benefit raffle was a motorcycle paint job. Second was $100 worth of leathers--motorcycle riding gear.

“Al is a good dude,” said a long-bearded Angel who wasn’t giving out any names. “We owe this to him. If it was somebody else that got hurt, then Al would be here for that guy. He’d be first one in the door. He’s that kind of guy.”

In a section of the club reserved for Parco’s family, Marie Parco spent her time thanking friends of her son for coming and trying to talk above the loud music. She said she found the support shown for her son more meaningful than the several thousand dollars the benefit was expected to raise.

“He has always been such a good friend to others,” she said. “It is such a nice thing to see it come back to him this way. It means a lot.”

Bond Among Bikers

Many there to support Little Al didn’t even know him. Justice Howard, a Harley rider from Hollywood and a frequent Motorcycle magazine cover girl, said she had never met him, but came because of the bond that exists among bikers.

“If you ride, then you know what it is he loved and has lost,” she said. “I don’t know him, but I’m here like everybody else supporting him. We try to stick together.”

Kevin McCoy grew up with Parco, but they went separate ways when Al’s interest in motorcycles began. McCoy was at the benefit Sunday. He said once a friend of Al’s, always a friend.

“You never lose a true friend,” McCoy said. “The reason for this (benefit) is a sad thing, but it says a lot about what kind of person Al is, that this many people, so many different people, came out.”