Mayor Dixon (center), gets ready to ride with Belair neighborhood kids.

Early Friday morning, some kids in the Belair-Edison Neighborhood woke up bright and early.  By 7:30 am, the event they had been looking forward to all summer was about to take place: their bike ride alongside Baltimore City Mayor Sheila Dixon. The kids, along with the event’s coordinators, the non-profit Belair Edison Neighborhoods Association (BENI), were counting their blessings.

As it were, the event almost didn’t happen.

A week before the event, all the helmets, pumps and bikes the kids had been primping all summer leading up to this event, were stolen from the old maintenance shed in Herring Run Park where they had been stored since the beginning of the program.

One of the children who received new bikes.

“For the kids, it was so disappointing,” said Mary Warlow, Marketing Director for the Belair-Edison Neighborhood Association. “They had put so many hours into rehabing their bikes and they got very attached to them.”

That's when a group of local business owners, headed by Tania and Nicolás Ramos from Arcos Restaurante and including Central Realty, the Hispanic Business Association, Eber Portillo from El Salvador Restaurant, Mi Bandera Supermarket and Gelmin Portillo from Latin Service LLC, came to the rescue. Within a couple of days, these businesses, aided by the Baltimore Mayor’s Office and the Baltimore Police Department, had already collected over 20 bikes — almost twice as many as they originally had. 

The case is now under investigation at the local Police Department. As for the kids, Ms. Warlow added, “they are just thrilled to ride their new bikes."

Fernando Parada, Vice President of the Hispanic Business Association — one of the contributing entities — said they were very excited to help make a positive impact on the community’s kids. “It gets to your spirit when you hear of something like this happen. This was an opportunity for our businesses to make a connection with the community at large.”

For the Belair-Edison Association, this means they can now continue and expand their program to include more children who can earn bikes through acts of community service — mostly gardening at the community gardens in the park and helping out with the Movies in the Park program they organize every summer. “We are so glad that so many minority businesses in the area turned out for us,” Ms. Warlow added. “It was really exciting to see people respond so positively to this. This means so much for our kids. It’s been almost overwhelming.”

Neighborhood kids receive the donated bikes.

But for Mr. Parada, the implications of Latino businesses uniting for a common cause are much deeper. “The Hispanic community is younger than other communities and participating in this kind of things together, be it a non-profit event or a community cause, will help us all,” he said. “The more we do this, the better we’ll understand the bigger picture, what it means to unite as a business community.”

As the children rode off next to the Mayor around the beautiful park they work so hard to help maintain, their beaming smiles seemed to agree: amazing things do happen when a community comes together.