Use your head, wear a helmet!
Free helmets available at Gallup Boys and Girls Club

ABOVE: Brittany Gleason, 11, adjusts the straps on a helmet Wednesday as she prepares to go for a bicycle ride at the Boys and Girls Club of Gallup. Helmets are being given away at the club and not only are they required by law, they protect the head and look cool. BELOW: Gallup Boys and Girls Club program specialist Myrrh Bright, right, turns to watch children as they ride bicycles to learn proper safety and get exercise at the same time on the northside of Gallup. New Mexico state law requires anybody under 18 to wear helmets while riding on bicycles or skateboards. Wearing a bike helmet can reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. [photos by Jeff Jones / Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Ken Collins is on a mission to get each child in McKinley County the opportunity to get a free bicycle helmet.

The Gamerco resident spoke to members of the McKinley County Commission Tuesday about efforts by organizations like the Gallup Boys and Girls Club and local law enforcement agencies to work together to make bike riding for Gallup’s youngsters safer.

He talked about state laws that require anyone under 18 who rides a bike, an ATV or a skateboard to wear a helmet for their safety. And he also talked about the fact that too many children ignore the law and many families just don’t have the money to buy helmets for their kids, even though they cost only a few dollars.

A while back, Collins went to the Gallup Flea Market and offered bike helmets for $5 each. On his first Saturday, he sold three helmets. On his second and third Saturdays, he didn’t sell any, even though youngsters would come up to him and beg their parents to buy them one.

“But the parents said they couldn’t afford it,” he said, adding that he realized, for example, that one family had four children which meant that they would have to buy four helmets.

He also learned that even though local police are required to give children they see without helmets tickets, that would cost them $10 if they didn’t have a helmet when they came to court, the law wasn’t being enforced. He was told, he said, that police were reluctant to go after children on bikes because they were afraid the children would run and police would find themselves in a chase situation which would put the children’s safety in jeopardy.

So after talks with the police and the Boys and Girls Club, a program was developed whereby police, instead of giving out citations, would give out vouchers which could be turned over at the Boys Club for a free helmet.

Karl Lohmann, head of the Boys Club, said his organization is getting the helmets from Think First at a cost of $10 each and has agreed to provide them at no cost to kids who belong to the Boys and Girls Club as well as those who turn in vouchers.

Collins said 5,000 vouchers have been printed up and have been turned over to police to distribute to children they see on bikes without helmets. Although the program has been up and operating now for a couple of weeks, no child has come by the Northside Center where the Boys Club has its headquarters to get a free helmet.

Collins said he is also talking to officials at the local Wal-Mart about the possibility of having the company give a free helmet to every family who buys a bicycle. While Wal-Mart officials in Gallup have expressed support for the program, the program needs corporate approval and that hasn’t occurred yet, said Collins.

For Collins, this is a personal issue.

Some 30 years ago, he suffered a brain injury and now works with others who have brain injuries so he knows first-hand just how serious bike injuries can be.

Dr. Alan Beamsley, medical director for the emergency room at the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital, said the hospital has no statistics on how many children in this area are treated at RMCH or the Gallup Indian Medical Center for head injuries while riding a bike without a helmet, but he said he would definitely support any program that would result in more young people wearing helmets.

Nationwide, hundreds of children die each year because they do not wear a helmet, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In 2006, the last year figures are available, the Institute reported the death of 770 bicyclists, most of them under the age of 18. Of these, 95 percent or 730 were not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.

Lohmann said the Boys Club, with the assistance of companies like Western Refinery and governmental agencies like the Indian Health Service, are working not only to increase use of helmets by young people in this area but to provide more education to area children in bicycle safety to even further reduce the number of injuries that occur in this area.

It’s not only youngsters who need to learn the benefits of helmet safety; as more and more adults take to the local bike trails, a greater emphasis is being made for safety among adults as well.

Gaye Brown de Alvarez, a copy editor at the Gallup Independent, was a frequent bike rider when the weather was good. But in October, 2005, on a trip to San Diego, she and her husband decided that the day was so beautiful and the trail was so easy that they could, for once, go without putting on a helmet. But going over a small bridge over a waterway, her bike picked up speed and she found herself going head first over the handlebars of the bike, landing on her head on the concrete bike path. Severe head injuries left her in a hospital for six weeks and then at home recuperating for another several weeks before she could come back to work.

Even today, she said, she still has not fully recuperated. “My short-term memory still has not returned completely,” she said.

She hasn’t gotten on a bike since then but someday, she said, she might. “But I can say that I will never get on a bike without a helmet again,” she said.