KERA’s series One Crisis Away, Inside a Neighborhood, wrapped up with the story of Tricia Oliver, a hard-working single mom whocouldn’t afford to buy a birthday bikefor her 5-year-old, Jayden.
This station’s listeners weren’t OK with that. More than a dozen called or wrote in, offering to buy Jayden that bike.
On Wednesday, a couple from Farmers Branch did just that, and a whole lot more.
Jayden Oliver and his Spiderman bike are quite the pair. The basket is a shiny, blue web decked out with half a dozen Spiderman rings. When Mom couldn’t get this bike for Jayden’s birthday, Michael Rogers was happy to jump in.
“I know how important bikes were to me when I was little and for him to not have one, it upset me," Rogers says. "So I felt the right thing to do was get him one.”
Rogers and his wife Melissa drove in from Farmers Branch. And when he pulled the bike from his trunk, Jayden didn’t even notice the football, light saber and remote control car in there too. (Rogers didn’t forget the bike safety gear either.)
Oliver was floored by the generosity.
“There are great people out there and I appreciate it," she said. "This is a lot.”
Mike Rogers told his friends at work about Tricia and Jayden and they took up a collection themselves. While that cash was welcome, the bike was clearly the star of the show.
