Robert Cass checked the brake lines, tires and chain on a bike perched on a stand in a back room of a Norfolk recreation center.
“Pedal power, brake power, kickstand, rear reflector, front reflector,” he said. “That’s 99% of what we do here.”
It’s one of many bikes that have been donated or found and are in various states of repair at the center. They have use left in them, Cass believes, and they can be restored to serve another child who may not have a bike.
He needed a bike as a kid to get through hard times.
This month, Cass and others at the Rose Marie Arrington Recreation Center plan to give 25 bikes to children from neighborhoods near the center in Diggs Town.
The effort is coordinated with the nonprofit GEAR Recovery’s Resilience Center, which operates programs for all ages within the rec center.
Terry Williams, adult programs director at the Resilience Center, said children have been stopping to see the bikes and picking out their favorites.
Williams said recycling bikes is a step toward something bigger. Eventually, people could return a bike they outgrow for something bigger. Smaller bikes can be revived again.
“This bike is going to be repaired, refreshed, refabricated and we give it to the next one,” Williams said.
“We can do that indefinitely,” Cass said.
Jazmine Garcia is the founder of the nonprofit GEAR Recovery and program director of the Resilience Center. She said the bike program, as it develops with Cass, will not just provide bikes but teach children to repair bikes and build their confidence.
“This gives them a sense of belonging and responsibility,” Garcia said.
Cass has combined charitable goals and love of sports for years.
He is from a military family that moved around, and considers New Hampshire, where his father retired, his hometown. He came to Virginia Beach through his own service in the Navy. He met his wife and had children.
But the path toward helping in the Norfolk community center began when the family lived in San Diego and his mother died by suicide when he was 9.
The family didn’t talk about it; he dealt with the loss by riding his bike in Yuma, Arizona, where they lived after San Diego.
“That was my escape,” Cass said.
He learned to fix a bike by grabbing his dad’s tools and getting to work.
In 2020, a friend who knew Cass was involved in triathlons spoke to him about honoring classmates who experienced mental illness or died by suicide.
Cass became a founding member of the Highs & Lows Tour, now an annual one-day riding event that benefits the National Alliance on Mental Illness in New Hampshire.
It became a platform for Cass to talk with family and friends about his loss and help others.
“Here’s what I’ve learned,” he said. “Through dealing with trauma, there is a way that you can provide joy and blessings to other people, right?”
Cass has refurbished high-end racing bikes in Hampton Roads to benefit NAMI Coastal Virginia and volunteered to fix bikes at a church. He also made the news by attempting to swim the Chesapeake Bay for another charity in 2019.
He connected with the Norfolk center through Hamilton Peoples, who grew up in the neighborhood and is his neighbor in Virginia Beach.
They met when Cass offered to restore a bike for Peoples’ son. Peoples said he knew Cass was doing something important.
“This is just the beginning,” Peoples said.
For now, the effort is to gather as many bikes as they can and give them new life.
“The short term is there’s going to be some kids who get bikes for Christmas,” Cass said.
