Scituate Man Spreads Smiles Across The Country One Bike At A Time

SCITUATE (CBS) - It's a labor of love for a Scituate man who's changing lives one bicycle at a time. Rich Bonanno has been retrieving broken bikes for years, and after repairs, he gives them to kids and even adults in poor communities around the country.

"I grew up in the 60s and 70s when every kid had a bike," he says. And he wants that to be true again. "The people I give bikes to, it's not even in their vocabulary to have a bike," he says.

Rich's mission started one day as he was driving to work. "I saw an expensive mountain bike at the end of a driveway and it was out with the rubbish," he said. "I just stopped and picked it up." The next day he found three more. Today his backyard is full of them.

In his Scituate garage, Rich repairs the bikes, giving them to needy kids or shipping them to needy communities. "McFarland, California; Henderson, Tennessee; Pine Ridge Reservation, Florida, Haiti, we sent a whole bunch of bikes to Haiti," Rich says.

And the good people of Scituate are heroes, too, keeping Rich deep in bikes. "They'll drop off bikes here, 2,3,4,5 a day," he says.

He's given away about 3500 bikes and Rich doesn't ask for monetary donations, often dipping into his own pocket or repairing and selling a bike to pay for parts. And he stays anonymous to the people who receive his gifts. "It's just nice to give to people you don't even know," he says.

And that's just the way he likes it. "The best deeds are done when no one's looking," he says. "When you leave here, what did you leave behind? What's your legacy? I can say I left a bunch of smiles," he says.

Rich has a long history with bikes. In fact he rode in the Pan Mass Challenge to fight cancer for 26 years. He also has great friends. One of them covers the cost of shipping the bikes to different parts of the country.