JACK THE BIKE MAN, a popular West Palm Beach nonprofit, is known during the local holiday season for its annual Christmas bike giveaway to the needy.
But around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, a bike technician returned to the charity warehouse at 420 Claremore Dr. to discover the barn doors improperly closed and the cash register empty.
The thief or thieves struck sometime between 3:40 p.m. Christmas Eve and Thursday morning and made off with nearly $700, roughly the price of two to three bikes. At least one bike was stolen, too.
“That’s the cash on hand we usually have on the daily operations for people coming in and buying a bike or servicing a bike. It does affect us,’’ said Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez, the charity’s executive director.
“The worst part is it happened during the holidays. That's the low blow,’’ he said. “It’s the timing of it.’’
But the charity didn’t close and remains open, thanks to a secret Santa who anonymously contributed $500 to the charity after hearing about the break-in.
“Out of the blue,’’ Hernandez said about the donation, which came via Paypal. “There are a lot of generous people out there, which is nice.’’
Hernandez wonders if the thief or thieves might have been teens because the only way they could have entered the charity was by prying open the locked barn doors and squeezing in through a narrow opening.
“To fit through they would have to be very thin. We are thinking it might be teenagers or kids,’’ he said.
Jack The Bike Man was founded in 1999 by Jack Hairston, who died in 2023. The nonprofit’s mission is to get bicycles to people who need and depend on them.
Anyone with information on the theft is asked to contact the West Palm Beach Police Department.
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.