Inside a tiny storefront just off University Avenue in St. Paul, bike fairies magically make people's pedaling dreams come true.
Well, maybe not fairies. But, for the hundreds of people each year who receive free bicycles from Mr. Michael Recycles Bicycles, it feels pretty magical. You need a bike? They'll give you a bike. People simply call to register, give their height, gender and type of bicycle they want and Michael and Benita Warns do the rest. There are no income guidelines, no forms to fill out. Over the past 20 years, the Warnses and a team of wrench-wielding volunteers have taken donated bicycles — some in pretty rough shape — and worked magic to make more than 4,500 people, most of them adults, happy. So far this year, they've given away nearly 300.
Benita Warns, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee, is company president — running social media, writing radio ads for Hudson-Wis.-based WDGY-AM, tracking orders. Her husband takes care of the mechanical stuff.
"Nobody works in this place," she said.
"We play with the bicycles," he said.
The idea for fixing 'em up and giving them away to those less fortunate was born in 2007, Benita Warns said.
That's when a chatty 6-year-old neighbor boy by the name of Zeek, who scrounged through alleyways for scrap metal with his grandfather, heard Mike could fix bikes. Maybe, Zeek asked, Michael Warns could help him fix up one of the beat-up bikes they sometimes found in alleys? So Zeek could have something to ride?
But the plan got considerably bigger when the Warnses, volunteering for their annual neighborhood cleanup, were given the task of processing donated bicycles. They learned that, while nice bicycles were loaded up to give away, the rest were to be broken down for scrap. Mechanical engineers by training, they knew those "scrap" bikes were nicer than anything Zeek and his family had.
