Speech therapy

Collaboration is central to Schreiber’s mission

At Schreiber, we love to partner with other community organizations where missions overlap. We have exciting news about two new collaborations to talk about.

Lillian Chea, a student in Schreiber’s S.T.A.R.S. Preschool, works on a piece of art that will be displayed at the Homestead Village stop for Lancaster Artwalk Oct. 6-7.

The first is about art. Lancaster Artwalk presents its next Artwalk Weekend Oct. 5-7, and there are at least 36 different locations participating.

The vast majority are in downtown Lancaster’s many art galleries and shops, but Artwalk has moved into the suburbs this year by adding a stop at Homestead Village’s Bachman Center, right next to us here at Schreiber.

The Bachman Center will be open for Artsfest 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 7.

The best news: We will submit some 90 pieces of art, all made by Schreiber kiddos, for display at Homestead throughout the weekend.

Art from our preschoolers and day care kids and by clients will be next to works by 11 Lancaster County artisans, including Barry Smith, Doug Good, Barbara Ulmer and Kitty Filling.

Jay Graver, Schreiber’s director of educational services, has been coordinating the gathering of art from Schreiber kids. There’s a chance you could see a piece by Malcolm Corley, a Schreiber kiddo and emerging young artist we wrote about recently.

The schedule at Homestead will also feature pottery and glass-blowing demonstrations (Saturday) and screen-printing by the Thaddeus Stevens STEM Truck (Sunday).

Donations made during the event will benefit the Homestead Village endowment fund. Schreiber is happy to support’s Homestead as they have supported us, through sending volunteers for our Intergenerational Program, their annual Mother’s Day Jewelry Sale and contributing to our special events, like our Gala and the Rubber Duckie Race.

Catherine Donohue

The other collaboration taps more directly into our expertise in providing therapy services for children. In this case, these would be services for some of the most vulnerable children.

The Lancaster County Behavioral Health and Developmental Services is launching a pilot program to serve families that have babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. The program could be expanded later to serve families that have other conditions present at birth, including Down Syndrome.

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, or NAS, happens when a baby is exposed to drugs in the womb and suffers withdrawl after birth. The condition can cause many serious problems, including low birthweight, breathing and feeding problems and seizures.

The county selected three Early Intervention special instructors to start the program, and one of them is Schreiber’s Catherine Donohue, an early intervention teacher who specailizes in working with kids ages birth to age 3 that have developmental delays.

“They were looking for people who wanted to do this, and I wanted to do this,” said Catherine, who has worked at Schreiber for 13 years. “I’ve always been interested in that hospital connection.”

That hospital connection will make this program different than the work she typically does. Most of the time, Catherine sees kids at home, at day care or here at the Center. For this new BHDS program, the babies will still be in the neonatal intensive care unit, and she will be working with families in their homes.

The teachers will show families “how can they prepare themselves and their home to bring a special needs child home,” Catherine said.

The program calls for teachers to work with biological families and foster families.

“That’s one of the things they were looking for in the teachers, and I’ve done that,” she said.

Meet the Grassos, a second generation Schreiber family

Starting services at Schreiber for two of her children did not create anxiety for Andrea Grasso. She had seen what Schreiber did for two of her sisters.

The Grasso family, Nick, Paxton, Giuliana and Andrea, at this year’s Schreiber Gala.

Andrea’s sister Ashley was born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that creates a host of physical and developmental challenges.

“We came to Schreiber almost every day of the week for her preschool and her therapy services,” Andrea said. “It was just something I grew up with. (Schreiber is) something that’s been part of my family since she was born.”

Then her parents adopted Ariel, a little girl who had Down Syndrome. And the visits to Schreiber continued.

Fast forward a few years. Andrea met and married Nick Grasso. Nick was an only child, but that didn’t make it harder to blend in with his new family. It might have made it easier.

“Both of my sisters just love Nick,” Andrea said. “They just gravitated toward him, and he would embrace them with open arms.”

When it was time for Andrea and Nick to start a family, they were both open to children with special needs. For Andrea, it was a natural continuation of the relationships she built with her sisters as a child. For Nick, he saw they had the experiences and the resources that few adopting parents could offer.
So they adopted Mia and Giuliana, and Giuliana has Do

Ariel Regan, right, is one of Andrea Grasso’s sisters. Ariel was having fun at Camp Schreiber in 2014 with Marla Peiffer.

wn Syndrome, just like Andrea’s sister Ariel. And they have two biological sons, Paxton and Jude.

Of the four, it was Paxton’s start in life that proved to be the scariest. They had taken him home from the hospital, but at 10 days something appeared to be wrong. He was crying and fussy and not wanting to eat. At the pediatrician’s office, the doctor saw Paxton have a seizure and sent them right to Lancaster General Hospital.

The medical team there came back with the kind of news that would be any new parent’s worst nightmare.

“The doctor came in and said, ‘He has a Level 3 brain hemorrhage. We need to get him to Hershey. LifeLine will be here in 7 minutes. And you need to get to Hershey as soon as you can.'”

Andrea remembers little of what happened on the trip to Penn State’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

“I know it was a whirlwind of doctors. And I remember pleading, ‘Can I please go with him? Can I please go with him?’ And they said no. And from that point on it was just a blur. We got to Hershey, and he had already been there for 15 or 20 minutes. They had him settled in a room. And he had tubes, and he was just very sick. It was terrifying. As a new mom, you have two young children at home already, and then you have this new baby, and he’s sick and you don’t know why. And you don’t know what caused it. You don’t know what happened. It’s just absolutely terrifying.”

Paxton Grasso

Paxton’s stay in the hospital lasted a month and a half. While he was there, doctors placed a shunt in his brain that connects to a small tube that runs down into his abdomen. The shunt keeps any fluid from building up in his brain again.

He’s a healthy, happy little guy now. But that early bit of brain trauma left him with some sensory issues, which, in turn, create some behavior issues. He attends Schreiber’s S.T.A.R.S. Preschool and has received occupational therapy for a little more than a year.

“He was a different kid when he (first) came in,” Andrea said. “He was shy and very cautious and anxious and nervous. The progress we’ve seen, even over the last six months, is incredible. He is now so much more calm and so much more relaxed. He’s learning how to regulate himself and how to regulate his emotions. He’s learning how to deal with different sensory issues. He’s learning those coping skills.”
The progress with Giuliana has been equally remarkable.

“When we first fostered her, she was a little less than a year old,” Andrea said. “At that point, she couldn’t hold her head up, she couldn’t roll over. She couldn’t do anything. She was already delayed because of the Down Syndrome, but she was also very much delayed because of neglect.”

Giuliana Grasso

And now, after five years of therapy first through Lancaster County Early Intervention and then at Schreiber, she can do so much more.

“She came (to Schreiber) being not being able to say two words together,” Andrea said. “Now, she’s able to say, ‘I want this,’ or ‘I need that.’ She can say sentences. That’s huge.”

Andrea knows more than most what a difference Schreiber can make in a child’s life. She saw it with her sisters. She’s seeing it now with her son and daughter. For many families, this is one of the few places, maybe even the last place, where they can have hope. Hope that a son will live a full life free of anxiety, or a daughter will learn to talk.

“Families with children with disabilities, they hang onto (Schreiber),” she said. “People from the outside need to see what happens here. They need to see how remarkable this place is and the incredible things that come out of here.”

Jason Hines found his voice at Schreiber

Working the checkout line at Stauffers of Kissel Hill in Lititz, Jason Hines keeps up a steady stream of chatter with every customer who comes through his line.

For some, he takes the numbers from their bill and references a date in history (he’s a history buff).

“You learn a lot of history here,” one woman told him.

Jason Hines checks out customers at the Stauffers of Kissel Hill in Lititz. When Jason was 3, he had speech delays related to autism. Today, he charms customers with his witty banter.

For others, he’ll share something about himself.

“This is the third anniversary of my becoming a standup comic,” he told another woman.

For every customer, he found some way to add a little extra bit of service.

“You saved 299 pennies today,” he said to one couple. “Have a great day.”

He’s 18 years old, a high school graduate working and taking classes at the Lancaster campus of Harrisburg Area Community College.

The Jason the folks at Stauffers know now is a long way from the Jason who came to Schreiber at age 3. Even before starting at Schreiber, Jason had been diagnosed with autism and was receiving Early Intervention services. Jason’s specific diagnosis, said his mom Jackie, was PDD-NOS: Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.

“I had some problems talking and had some motor delays,” Jason said.

Jackie is a special instructor at Schreiber. She knows her way around education and kids with autism and other learning disabilities. Even for her, choices could be hard. When Jason was 5 and it was time to decide whether or not to start school, Jackie was torn.

“I struggled whether to keep him in early intervention or have him start kindergarten,” she said. “Cognitively, he was ready. But his expressive language with that of a 2 year old. Ultimately we decided to send him to kindergarten, and we had plenty of support services in place.”

Initially at Schreiber, he received all threee services and special instruction from Jay Graver in the S.T.A.R.S. Preschool. Eventually, he concentrated on occupational therapy, attending Schreiber until he was 8 to work on his sensory integration, fine motor skills and attention and focus.

By middle school, he had made a lot of progress, but he still worried that he wasn’t always speaking correctly.

“Once ninth grade hit, kids stopped being jerks, and I started making more friends,” Jason said.

In high school, he flourished. He was involved in an anti-bullying program, he did plays, he sang in the choir. He joined the Unite Club, Warwick High School’s Mini-THON in support of the Four Diamonds Fund.

“I raised the most money, which made me King of Mini-THON,” Jason said.

All of his success helped him become senior class vice president and gain enough confidence to start trying to become a performer. He has dabbled in stand up comedy, telling jokes and doing impressions. He made news this month when Lancaster Online noticed that his witty patter with customers included an impression of Philadelphia Eagles play-by-play announcer Merrill Reese.

That’s how he is every day on the job at Stauffers, always a willing performer, especially for little kids. He will talk like Mickey Mouse or do voices from “Monsters Inc.” or “Frozen.” He will ask them about their favorite characters. Kids will ask moms to go to Jason’s line when they check out.

Toni Lutz, a shift supervisor for the cashiers at the Lititz store, said she knew Jason before he even started working at Stauffers. He and her daughter Madeline went to school together at Warwick.

“He’s naturally that way,” Toni said. “He’s nicer than most people. He’s just kind. It’s refreshing.”

“We Delight Shoppers” is a lyric in the Stauffers jingle, and Jason said he sang that at the end of his job interview back in 2015.

“It helped me get the job,” he said. “My charm wins people over.”

At HACC, he’s taking classes with an eye on becoming a teacher, probably an elementary school teacher. Which means he would be working with little ones on their writing and speaking and making sure they were paying attention.

And that feels just about right.

The Brenneman boys are all Schreiber boys

“I love it here,” Dani said. “It’s so good here. Everybody gets you. They understand what you’re going through. And everybody is so friendly and so accepting.”

Miles eventually received occupational and speech therapy, along with continuing his PT. He was with Jay Graver in preschool for two years, and he was joined the second year by his younger brother Levi.

“Miles was here three times a week for preschool and therapy, Levi was here twice a week,” said Dani, who lives in West Lampeter Township with her husband, David, and the boys. “We were coming every day for that year.”
Miles eventually graduated from preschool to start kindergarten. He’s 6 now. Levi and Isaac still attend Mr. Jay’s preschool.

“When we were looking around for preschools for Miles, I liked the emphasis here on diversity and that there are children of all abilities,” said Dani, who has an associate degree from Harrisburg Area Community College in early childhood education. “I liked it so much I’ve sent all my boys here.”

Well, almost all. The youngest, Asher, is only 4 months old. He comes along when Mom drops off Levi and Isaac, so he’s getting to know Schreiber, too. Even if it’s only as the place where he gets his morning feeding and a nap.

Soon enough, though, Mr. Jay can probably expect to see the fourth Brenneman boy come through.

Michael Corretger: Hearing is believing

Like a lot of the kids we see at Schreiber, Michael has had a pretty rough start to life. His mother, Migdalia “Mickey” Malave, worked third shift at Lancaster General Hospital while she was pregnant. After Michael was born, she went back to work, and he stayed with a woman who offered day care services out of her home.

When Michael was about a year old, he started experiencing seizures. Mickey said they were afebrile seizures: She said he would look like he was daydreaming or zoning out.

He was also prone to ear infections. It turned out the ear infections would cause fevers, which would then often trigger the seizures.

Mickey said she quit her job so she could devote more time to taking care of Michael, running him to doctor visits or having tests done.

“And I needed to find a new day care,” Mickey said. “She was very nice, but she wasn’t set up to take care of him the way he needed.”

She worked through a long list of interviews with different centers before she came to Schreiber and met with Christina Kalyan at Circle of Friends.

“I would be talking and asking questions and everything would be fine, and then I’d mention Michael’s seizures, and I’d get this look,” Mickey said, recalling her experiences with other centers. “When I talked with Christina, she said, ‘What kind of seizures?’ She was the only one to ask that. Then I got the tour and saw everything you do here, and I was, like, yes this is the place.”
She was even more sure about her choice when Christina started talking to her about Michael.

“My son was 13, 14 months old, and he couldn’t say ‘Mom’; that didn’t seem right,” said Mickey, who has two older daughters, Monique, 14, and Jasmine, 13. “I had him in for a hearing test, and they said he was fine. But Christina noticed he couldn’t hear. She said, ‘You have to be his advocate. Insurance will cover this if you take him to an ENT. Get him tested again.’ I did, and they found he had the fluid building up in his ears and wasn’t hearing well.”

Michael is 3 (and turns 4 in August), and he’s finally starting to turn some corners. He underwent surgery in May at Lancaster General to put tubes in his ears to clear the fluid buildup from the infections and restore his hearing. While they did that, doctors also took out his tonsils to relieve sleep apnea.

He receives speech therapy at Schreiber to help him overcome the speech delay caused by his hearing impairment, and he’s on medicine to help control the seizures.

All of that means he’s sleeping better, hearing better and speaking better. Mickey couldn’t be more happy with Michael’s progress at Schreiber.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

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Help us to provide therapy and educational services for children like Michael. Visit our DonateNow page here and set up a recurring gift. Your $10 monthly gift will pay for one half-hour of therapy or keep Circle of Friends stocked with blankets for the babies in our new infant care room. Questions? Call the Financial Development Office at 717-393-0425 ext. 105.

Summer means camps at Schreiber

Let’s start with our new camps.

First, we’re offering two handwriting camps. Ready to Write is aimed at younger kids, ages 41/2 to 6 (entering preschool or kindergarten). This camp develops readiness skills for writing with focus on motor and perceptual skills required for writing fluency.

The Write Stuff is for 6-8 year olds (enterting first through third grade) who have already learned letter and number recognition and printing but need some extra practice. Focus is on foundational skills of posture, fine motor control and visual-motor skills.

Both camps will be led by a licensed occupational therapist, and the emphasis will be on fun. All campers will receive their own handwriting kit.

Handwriting camps will run twice a week (Mondays and Wednesdays) for six weeks starting July 10. For more information on times, dates and prices, visit our summer camps page here.

The other new offering will be our Sensory Explorer Camp. This camps will offer young children a broad range of therapeutic activities that involve sensory play and social skills development. It is open to all children of all abilities. Activities will include: water play, arts and crafts, outdoor games, music and nature hikes.

This camp will serve kids ages 4-7, and you can pick from a morning or afternoon session. The Sensory Explorer Camp will run Aug. 7-10. For details, visit the summer camps page here.
And don’t forget about our flagship camp, Camp Schreiber. In its 21st year, Camp Schreiber offers the classic week-long summer camp experience for kids and youth ages 8 to 21. Weekly sessions start June 26 and continue through the week of July 24, including an abbreviated camp week on July 5-6.

Finally, for teens we have our Club 625 Camp, the summertime version of our Club 625 outings. Young people can reconnect with old friends and meet new ones during our camp weeks in the first two weeks of August. This program offers fun on-site activities, as well as opportunities to work on social skills during outings in the community.

To register for any of our camps, visit our registration page here.

Anthony Melendez’s new look

On top of that, Anthony was also born without his right ear, the result of a rare condition known as Goldenhar syndrome. Jen Melendez, Anthony’s mom, said his other physical challenges had been identified before he was born. WIth his various conditions to monitor, doctors didn’t recognize the ear was missing until after Anthony was delivered at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in June 2010.

Since then, Anthony has yearly follow-up appointments with Dr. Scott Bartlett and a team of cranio-facial specialists at CHOP to monitor his progress. Jen said Dr. Bartlett had told her that Anthony might be able to undergo a procedure to improve the appearance of the area where his ear was missing.

She wasn’t in a big hurry to do the surgery, mainly because it wasn’t something she thought needed to be “fixed.”
“We used to call it his love nub,” Jen said. “We didn’t make a big deal out of it. He was perfect to me.”

The CHOP doctors are one of the few places in the country trained in MEDPOR ear reconstruction, a procedure developed by a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon that uses a plastic implant attached using the patient’s own tissue.

For Anthony, doctors would mold the implant from his fully formed ear, take some tissue from his scalp that would serve as a kind of living glue and stitch the implant into this tissue and onto the side of his head. Then they would take some additional skin from his groin and stitch that over the implant to make it look more like a real ear.

Jen went ahead with the procedure for Anthony on Nov. 21. The surgery took seven hours, and he was in the hospital for two days, leaving in time to be home for Thanksgiving.

Two weeks later, the protective mold came off and she was able to see his new ear for the first time.

“Even though they try to prepare you for everything involved, it doesn’t completely prepare you,” Jen said. “I was expecting to see a perfectly formed ear, but it was swollen and bruised. It didn’t look like an ear at that point.”

There were a couple of setbacks requiring two additional surgeries – one in December and another in February.
By mid-March, six weeks after the third surgery, the swelling and redness were fading, and Anthony was beginning to look like he had something approaching a normal right ear. The new one is still a little larger than the one he was born with, but that’s on purpose.

“He’ll grow into it,” Jen said.

Still, it’s been a stressful time.

“Living through it and watching him go through it, it takes a toll on me,” Jen said. “There were times I thought the implant was failing. I was doubting myself.”

During a recent physical therapy session, Anthony was more than willing to stop for some pictures. He was still the same bouncy little boy. The process doesn’t seem to have changed him, even if he understands that he is changed.

“At one point, we finally talked about it,” Jen said. “I said, ‘That’s your ear.’ And he said, ‘That’s my ear? For me?’ And I said, ‘For you.'”

She turned back to watch as Anthony continued with his therapy session, taking one more step on the long journey to realizing his fullest potential.

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If Anthony’s story moves you, visit our donation page and consider a small recurring contribution. Your monthly or quarterly gift will make a difference in the lives of Anthony and the thousands of kids we see throughout the year.

Schreiber speech therapist works her magic

Thomas started coming to Schreiber in January. (Note: That’s not his real name; his parents asked not to use his first name or their last name to protect his privacy.) He’s a cute, fun little guy with a thick thatch of blond hair.

His mother Mandy was feeling anxious about what she was seeing with her son. Thomas was talking by the time he was 3, but there were problems.

“He could speak short sentences, but he was pushing his words together and I couldn’t understand him,” Mandy said.

He had the vocabulary, but he struggled to get the words out. And then he would get frustrated or would act silly to redirect, his mom said.

After checking with their pediatrician and with their therapist at IU-13, she decided she wanted private therapy.

“So we came to Schreiber,” Mandy said.

They started working with Katie, who noticed something right away: Thomas was talking too fast.

“When he came in, he was hard to understand,” Katie said. “He talked really fast. He was making articulation errors, grammar errors. He was using wrong verbs. The first rule we had was: Slow down.”

Mandy said it was like she flipped a switch.

“By the third session, he was a different kid,” she said. “She gave him the tools in three sessions to make him just relax. She gave him the reassurance and the confidence to slow down.”

His problems aren’t as complex as some of the kids Katie sees. There’s no underlying diagnosis other than speech and language delay. And while each child is unique, it’s fairly common to see kids with language delays, Katie said. T was evaluated before he came to Schreiber, and that therapist recommended services.

“Sometimes, kids need services to correct those things,” she said. “Based on the great progress he has already made, starting therapy was a good choice.”

Thomas has a specific set of therapy goals. He’s learning to read cues so he’s aware when people have trouble understanding him. He’s working on the difference between past tense and present tense.

“He might say ‘we eated pizza’ or ‘we go to the store’ when he meant ‘we went to the store,'” Katie said.

He’s working on a couple of specific sounds that give him trouble, like making sure an “L” sound doesn’t slip into a “W.”

And, of course, he’s trying to take it slow.

Mandy said the difference is huge.

“He’s proud of his behavior,” she said. “He’s a storyteller, and he’s funny. He’s able to use words to make a joke. He’s T now – the T I always knew he would be.”

And she gave Katie and Schreiber all the credit.

“They are magicians,” Mandy said. “And that’s not everywhere. Even in the medical community, that’s not most places. This place is special.”

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Are you particularly grateful for the work of a Schreiber therapist? You can show your appreciation by making a small monthly donation in their honor. Just visit our DonateNow page here to set up your recurring gift. And be sure to include a dedication note as you fill out the online donation form.

‘Amazing little guy’ learning to play with friends

LJ has a number of diagnoses, including sensory processing disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and echolalia (a way of learning language characterized by repeating what another person just said). He receives speech and occupational therapy services.

Beginning in infancy, LJ’s guardians noticed many delays in his development, and he was referred to Schreiber by a local psychologist. He began his time at Schreiber in OT about a year and a half ago. LJ recently began receiving speech therapy with Jeremy Ewell, who is helping LJ learn social cues and improve his focus. Jeremy noticed LJ’s difficulty in concentrating and staying on task and developed strategies to improve his level of focus.

By frequently switching tasks and using a visual calendar, LJ is able to better process what his end goals are, giving him more incentive to remain focused. This is just one example of the many tactics Jeremy uses to build LJ’s cognitive progression. But it doesn’t seem like work to LJ, Kathy said. He starts every Wednesday saying: “Today is my day to see Mr. Jeremy!”

In spite of his challenges, Kathy Steibnaecher, his grandmother, describes LJ as a happy, music-loving 5-year old.

“He loves Mickey Mouse, Captain America, Winnie the Pooh, swimming and trucks,” Kathy said. “He’s always quick to tell us he loves us, say thank you, and share… He’s an amazing little guy!”

In his time at Schreiber, Kathy has noticed significant improvements with LJ. Even though he still struggles to interact with other children, LJ is now able to play alongside them. Parallel play with others is a large stepping stone for LJ for the end goal of socialization, Jeremy said. Kathy has also noticed the progress LJ has made with his focus.

LJ’s type of autism allows him to understand and follow directions, and he is capable of other kinds of communication, placing him socially ahead of many kids with autism.

“He has a lot going for him,” Jeremy said.

Jeremy’s work with LJ is a good illustration of how our therapists team up with parents and guardians to give families the tools that allows kids to practice at home the skills they learn at Schreiber.

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At Schreiber, our average reimbursement rate is 42 percent. That means for every $100 in charges we submit to insurance companies, we receive, on average, $42 in payment. Please support our work so that we can continue to provide services to LJ and the thousands of other children we see each year. Just visit our Giving page here, and make your donation today.

AMBUCS rides to the rescue

There’s just one problem. They can be expensive.

This is where AMBUCS comes in. AMBUCS is a national nonprofit “dedicated to creating mobility and independence for people with disabilities,” according to its website.

Most of the work nationally and locally involves helping families obtain Amtryke therapeutic tricycles. And that’s why Howard Livingston and Bruce Schmoyer visited Schreiber Monday morning.

Howard and Bruce are two longtime Lancaster AMBUCS volunteers, and they stopped in to assemble a new bike for Elizabeth Owens and her son, Dorian. They live in New Holland.

Dorian was born with hydrocephalus. While he was still in utero, fluid developed inside his skull. The resulting pressure caused brain damage that left Dorian with ataxic cerebral palsy, seizure disorder and deafness.

He has been coming to Schreiber since he was 2; he’s 16 now. He receives all three therapies here, including physical therapy with Laurie Panther.

She said if a child can propel the bike on their own or if riding helps him or her with their endurance or strength, they are a candidate to receive one of the bikes.

Laurie surprised Dorian with the bike that Howard and Bruce had just finished putting together. His eyes lit up when he saw it.

“This is a big deal for him,” his mom said as Dorian wheeled his new bike through Schreiber’s hallways. “It’s good for his coordination and his core muscle strength. And the biggest thing is the feeling of independence. This will be his bike for him to ride on his own at home.”

Laurie knew Dorian would be excited.

“We ride the bike we have every week here,” she said. “He asks to ride it. It’s his favorite thing to do. Being able to surprise him with it today was pretty cool.”

The Amtryke bikes aren’t cheap. One can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 or more, depending on what features are required.

AMBUCS pays for them. A family or an organization such as Schreiber will put in the request. AMBUCS reviews the request and, if approved, orders the bike from Amtryke.

“We were (buying) about two or three a year up until about a year ago,” Howard said. “The local group decided we needed to ramp it up. We said we could do better. We bought 12 bikes just through our chapter in the past year.”

AMBUCS funds its local bike buying program primarily through an annual art auction, Howard said.

This was the fourth time Laurie has arranged for a family to receive one of the bikes, she said. It doesn’t get old.

“This was a huge deal for me today,” she said. “Most kids like riding a bike. This gives them the ability to ride just like their friends or their brothers and sisters. We’ve had kids go on bike rides with their family for the first time instead of being pulled in a trailer.”

Mom is probably already planning that first family ride with Dorian.