My name is Casey and I am 16 years old. In June I will be doing my 5th Annual Bike Ride! I will be starting my ride at Subaru Santa Monica (my sponsor) and some of the Subaru Cycling Team will be joining me on one or some of the legs to Laguna Beach and on day two I will meet up at Whole Foods (my sponsor) and ride with the Whole Foods Regional President and team members and end My Bike Ride in Del Mar (after going past Del Mar, up to Torrey Pines and looping back round)!  I will be raising money for: Children’s Hospital LA, Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation and my education fund.

Goal:  My goal is to raise $15k but I hope to do even more than that!!!

Philanthropy Movement: I think it is important to know your neighbors and the people that work and live in the community with and I have worked really hard to reach out to members of the community for support.  I stop at many fire departments along the route so I can have a break, chat with them and talk about what I am doing. I  would like to become a firefighter after I go to college. I hope I can count on you for a donation of your choosing as anything is always welcomed and appreciated!

Where does the money go??

CHLA:  After my last bike ride –  I got to purchase a whole ($3.5K) mobile gaming Go-Kart for the hospital/Child Life. They will be using these gaming carts for patients all throughout the hospital. They are especially great for patients who might be in isolation and can’t leave their rooms. As you can imagine, gaming is a great escape for some of them and gives them an opportunity to just be a kid while in the hospital – they needed ten in total – couldn’t do that but at least I got to purchase 1-  and the rest of the money went to the transportation dept.

I have also donated to the Child Life department before – this is where staff work on a variety of things with kids and their families such as distracting kids during medial procedures, involving the whole family during the hospital stay, creating and developing communication skills for nurses and doctors and the give toys to kids that are having medical procedures so those toys can in turn teach the kids what’s happening to them during their hospital procedures.

I did a tour of the hospital once and what impressed me so much was the helicopter landing pad and what the crews job is.  Did you know that they have 30 seconds for when the helicopter touches down to get the child down to where he/she needs to be. They have to be fast, caring, knowledgeable of so many different situations during their pick up – so, I decided I would like to donate to the transportation team – this is the helicopters and ambulances – the people that get you to the hospital in an emergency situations fast as humanly possible! I think that gets overlooked sometimes and if they weren’t around to take kids to the hospital in time of need then – well, that would not be good. https://www.chla.org

LAFDF:  The city doesn’t have enough funds to cover everything our firefighters need.  Our city fire department relies on sophisticated systems and the LAFD lacks fully updated equipment from new hand held tools to hand held tablets, the monies are also used for outreach programs and helps better train the LAFD and strengthens ties to the community.  Lastly, the LAFDF helps support the cadet program which helps train our future firefighters! http://supportlafd.org

VIDEOS OF MY BIKE RIDE 2017: 

You can watch a photo montage last year:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nhk4jHwpiI&feature=youtu.be or footage of the actual ride : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw2dFxpf56s 

MY 2018 Bike Route: