SANTA ANA : It’s a Bike Bonanza for Boys, Girls Club

Children in the city’s Boys and Girls Club have new bikes and helmets this week, thanks to the Elks Lodge, the Police Department and the City Council.

Donation of the 20 bicycles, some of which might have been lost or stolen and not reclaimed, were the first concrete result of a new city ordinance allowing police to donate impounded bicycles to nonprofit organizations.

“There’s a lot of kids in Santa Ana who don’t have money for bicycles,” said Elks Club member Jim Tobin, who helped organize the program. “And the bikes are sitting there.”

Officials say the bicycles will cut delinquency, as the city ordinance requires, because children will use them to ride to school. Also, the youngsters received the bicycles as a reward for participating in Boys and Girls Club programs, which are meant to keep children away from gangs and drugs.

Tobin said the Elks Club bought the helmets and that five members of the Elks Bicycle Club spent 80 hours making $800 worth of repairs to the bikes. None of the bicycles had been licensed, he said, and no one stepped forward to claim them within 90 days after they were impounded by police.