Woodland Hills : Youth Joins Mayor in Bike Safety Video

Thirteen-year-old John Carnes of Woodland Hills, winner of a contest to design a logo for a bicycle safety program in the Los Angeles Unified School District, was on hand this week when another contributor--Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan--completed a video for the project.

Program director Tana Ball said she asked the mayor to appear in the instructional video because he is an ideal role model--he rides a bicycle and wears a helmet. Riordan’s part of the video emphasized the need to wear a helmet on every bike ride.

When the mayor arrived to film his scene Monday, there was one problem. No one had remembered to bring a helmet. But it was only a short wait until a cyclist happened by the Griffith Park filming site and agreed to lend his helmet to Riordan.

Meanwhile, the mayor studied his lines.

“It was one of those things like in a TV show where the person stands next to someone who is famous and the famous person doesn’t know he is there,” John said. “The mayor turned to me and I was thinking, ‘oho,’ and he said ‘why don’t we change this last line and you do it with me?’ ”

The video will likely end with Riordan and the youth saying, “And take it from us, Los Angeles is a great place to ride.”

The program, a new element in the school district’s physical education program, will be taught to about 300,000 middle and high school students in the fall.

Ball said she wanted to include students in the project, so she invited schools to compete in a logo design contest.

John, a student at Holmes Middle School Magnet in Northridge, said his challenge in creating the logo was to reduce the title of the Bicycle Commuting and Safety Education Video Program of the Los Angeles Unified School District into something that would fit into a logo.

The resulting logo will appear on all program materials and in the video.