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closeYORK -- York the city, and York the county, clearly you do not like a "bike" thief.
Especially when the bike is really a special tricycle, and it was the pride and joy of a 33-year-old city of York icon living with Down syndrome named Tommy Kimble.
In Friday's Herald in this column, the story ran about Kimble's tricycle being stolen from his family's yard on Charlotte Street. Dawn broke with people mad over their coffee. They got madder.
"If I find that guy who did it, I will ring his neck," one older lady from Hickory Grove told me over the telephone this morning.
"!@#$%^&*," said the next caller.
You may surmise and be right those were cuss words. I am no angel but that guy had even me blushing.
"I'll buy him a new bike right now," an electrician from Rock Hill named Richard McDonald said.
A woman named Shirley Cooper called to say her family had several old industrial tricycles she would be willing to give.
"Taking that man's bike is just cold," Cooper said.
The next guy to call, named Gene Totherow, said, "I have a bike like that I got a few years ago; I'll take over there right now."
Turns out Totherow worked at General Tire with Donnie Kimble, Tommy Kimble's older brother and the man who built Tommy's "bike" from an old industrial tricycle he got years ago when the tire plant closed.
Then a guy named Jason Tucker called me. He was so mad he had already priced new three-wheeled cycles and was willing to go buy one immediately.
"I live in York, it's my home, and I don't know this man or his family," Tucker said. "But I want to help."
More calls and visits came to Jean and Lester Kimble, Tommy's parents. The phone started ringing before dawn and didn't stop. People showed up to express outrage and offer to help. Lester went to work Friday morning at Wal-Mart, where he's been for more than 10 years after retiring from a York plant. He works the sporting goods counter.
"People are upset," Lester Kimble said. "They think a lot of Tommy."
At the house, Jean Kimble, Tommy's mother, manned the phone. Calls from friends, family, strangers, offering to help look, or buy a new bike, or both. She decided not to accept any generous offers yet, with hopes Tommy's cycle is found or returned.
"It just goes to show how many good people there are still in York," Jean Kimble said. "All this for Tommy. I guess it shows people love him. He's always got a hug for people, even today."
A York Police Department detective with 18 years on the force named John Naylis got the case. He wasted no time. Naylis said Friday he canvassed the neighborhood, talked to neighbors. In his travels to the courthouse, and so many other places around the city Friday, Naylis said, "There has been an outpouring of people" offering to help look.
"It looks like the entire city is looking for this bike," Naylis said.
Naylis went by the Kimble home and told Jean Kimble he was looking for the bike and handling the investigation. She thanked him.
Then, Tommy Kimble, sad on the porch swing all day, got up.
He hugged John Naylis. Then Naylis left, to try and find the "bike" that has showed there is still a huge collective heart out there for a guy who likes to give hugs named Tommy.
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