Community raises money to purchase new bike for young man with autism
After thieves took the bicycle, father of young man takes to social media, initiating amazing community response
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Imagine this: you’ve been saving for an electric bicycle to commute to work with. You finally save up the money to purchase one at the local Costco. You race home and decide to take it out on a test drive because you’re so excited about the new wheels. You take a spin to your local mall and end up heading over to the goodwill store to go shopping, locking up the bike outside. About 10 minutes later, you come back out to find the lock is clipped and the brand new bike is gone.
That’s exactly what happened to Logan Hagler on Sunday, but the Anchorage community came together with an amazing response after hearing of the unfortunate incident.
“He hadn’t even had the bike for an hour, he drove up to the Goodwill, parked his bike in the lot, got his lock out, locked it up,” Ken Hagler, Logan’s dad, said. “Went inside and came back out — within 10 minutes, the bike is gone.”
As a young man with autism, Logan relies on bike transportation to get to and from work every day. After the bike was stolen, Ken Hagler said the emotional impact for young people with autism is very real and they take it very personally, so it was a hard situation for his son.
After hearing of the incident from his son, Ken took his frustrations to Facebook to do some venting.
“(In) 10 minutes time, someone cut the lock and stole it!!! IN BROAD DAY LIGHT AT ONE OF THE BUSIEST SPOTS IN THIS CITY!!!” the post from Ken read. “Didn’t even have it long enough to get the serial number off of it and now it is GONE!!!”
It was only about an hour later when they received their first generous message and from there the support kept growing.
“I started getting people reaching out to me and people wanted to give me money,” Logan said. “We didn’t even ask for it. We didn’t ask for anything.”
Ken said the community came together with many people donating money to the family, enough to buy a new e-bike.
Logan said the community reached out with kindness and love, which ultimately allowed him to realize something.
“It wasn’t a punishment,” he said. “It was a lesson to show that there still is good in this world.”
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