Laurels & lances: Bikes & buttons
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Laurel: To a set of wheels. A bike is important transportation for many people — especially high school students.
But for Elijah Mendez, 17, transportation is more than just getting around town for fun or errands. It’s about service. The Plum High School senior is a Renton Volunteer Fire Department junior firefighter.
His bike was in bad shape. He didn’t have a car. That meant when Mendez had to get to the station for a fire call, he often had to run a mile and a half. It was giving him shin splints, but it didn’t make him stop.
Mendez is also an Air Force Junior ROTC cadet. His master sergeant, Kevin Butler, noticed the need and “won’t-quit attitude” and found a way to help. He isn’t permitted to just give gifts to students, so he found a way to build a chain of support. Finding a Plum police officer led to the Western Pennsylvania Police Athletic League and its toy drive, Stuff a Store.
“We give dozens of bikes away every Christmas. This one had a purpose,” said Joe Risher, a retired Allegheny County police officer and Stuff a Store co-chair.
But Mendez needed a bike that could do the job, not a casual discount store bike. Enter Gatto Cycle Shop in Tarentum, where owner George Gatto agreed to sell a bike at cost, and service manager Will Ryan was so touched that he said he’d cover anything over the $200 budget Stuff a Store provided.
This might sound like a “give a kid a bike” story, but considering how many people made it happen, and how much Mendez gives to his community, it’s a lot more.
Lance: To lack of protection. Andrea Beneke is an administrative assistant at Jeannette’s City Hall. Last week someone came into her office, closed the door and demanded to speak with her. Beneke opened the door, and the person shut it again. It was the kind of close-quarters confrontation that is exactly why many government offices are designed to separate front-line employees from the public with things like bulletproof glass or other security measures.
“We need panic buttons. I don’t care when, but they have to be done as soon as possible,” said Mayor Curtis Antoniak at Tuesday’s council meeting. “Today’s world is crazy.”
What is crazier is that Jeannette did have panic buttons — two kinds. There were old foot pedals. Then there were buttons under desks. When the building was renovated, the desk buttons were removed. The wires to the foot pedals were cut.
It is ludicrous that in remodeling the building, two different methods of protecting employees were disabled with no one thinking of replacement, despite interaction with the public and dealing with money.