A man with a debilitating illness gives his time to helping children by building bikes. And the local Sheriff’s captain helps out.
By Cathy Neiman/Staff Writer
There have been numerous stories written about this modern day hero. A man who repairs old bicycles to look new again, gives them away to charity and needy children, all the while money used to do this comes from donations or out of his own pocket.
Mission With Bikes is the acronym for Mark William Blum, a legally blind, crippled man who lost all of his manual dexterity due to chronic progressive multiple sclerosis.
Prior to 1996, Blum was a vice president of an insurance company. He was forced to retire early and go on disability when the disease reached an advanced state.
Blum had an interest in bikes since childhood. He started to repair old bicycles, purely for therapy. He didn’t want to go into hiding because of his illness. He turned his garage in his Agoura Hills home into a bicycle repair shop. He repaired the first 80 bikes on his own and then donated them to a children’s charity. After that, Blum’s MS started to become worse, so volunteers came to his home and built the bicycles under Blum’s instruction.
One of Blum’s regular volunteers, Capt. Jim Glazar, of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station, organized a donation through the Malibu Lion’s Club. The Malibu Lion’s Club, in joint effort with several Optimists club members, adopted an inner city school in the Lenox area of Los Angeles County. The school, Raymond Avenue Elementary School, which is in the Los Angeles Unified School District, started a perfect attendance program. In the past, students with perfect attendance would get a gift certificate for a pizza. Now, with the help of Glazar and the Malibu Lion’s Club, all students with perfect attendance receive a bicycle. Back in June of 2002, Blum donated 30 bikes to 30 students for perfect attendance.
“We hope that next year we will be able to donate at least twice as many bikes to Raymond Avenue School,” Glazer says. “It seemed to have boosted the kids morale.”
Glazar tries to volunteer with Blum as much as he can, about once or twice every few months.
” It’s hard right now because of my work,” Glazar says. “When I retire in March, I will have much more time to repair bikes.”
Blum has donated his bicycles to 133 different organizations and charities all over the United States and has given bikes to individual children in Russia, Bulgaria and Mexico. Mission with Bikes has also donated 60 bikes to the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. One of Blum’s most memorable donations was the “Gang Reduction Project of East Los Angeles,” where he donated 14 bikes.
“Leave a gang, get a bike,” was the slogan for the program. The children in the program were so touched by Blum’s kindness that they traveled to Blum’s home in Agoura from East L.A. just to say, “Thank you.”
“This is a full-time job for me,” Blum says, as he zips around in his electric wheelchair in his cluttered, yet organized garage/repair shop. “I open up shop at 6 a.m. and close up at 9 p.m.”
On the back wall in his garage are various certificates and plaques of achievement, honor, citizenship, sponsorship and recognition, including one from the Gleitman Foundation, which is from world dignitaries from South Africa.
“I was shocked when I received this,” he says proudly. “I couldn’t believe they knew about me in South Africa!”
Besides giving away bikes to charity, Blum is also a member of the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
“I want to try to be an inspiration to others with my disease. So many people who get sick just seem to hide away, they don’t have to do that.”
Currently, Blum is meeting up with an attorney to make Mission With Bikes a nonprofit organization. “I was a really good vice president at the insurance company I worked for, but I think I am better at this.”
To volunteer for Mission With Bikes, call Mark Blum at 818.991.5805 or e-mail: mwbikes4u@aol.com.