“I got pied for a new ride!”

This was the slogan used for a recent fundraising campaign coordinated between the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Housing, Food Services, and Panther Central, and IUOE Local 95 members.

The campaign’s great success to raise funds for a handful of adaptive bikes was celebrated on Tuesday, June 6th when several of the University’s executives got pied, as was promised by Assistant Vice Chancellor of Business, Jim Earle one year ago.

In total, Variety presented 8 adaptive bikes during the June 6th presentation that was held at the University of Pittsburgh. It included a full house of staff attendees and others from the community to watch the pieing event and cheer on the kids, who took their inaugural ride on their new bikes!

One of the bike recipients was Garrett, who also received an adaptive stroller through Variety in December 2016. His mother, Laurel gave voice to the incredible impact that the stroller has had on their family since receiving it.

She said, “This stroller has meant so much to our family. Garret is getting heavier and is very hard to transport. Right now, I’m a single mom and it has basically allowed us to leave the house.

This has helped us so much with just being able to go get ice cream, go for walks because I don’t know if you know that wheelchairs are very, very heavy.

He loves it too because he can move himself, which he can’t really do too much on his own. We dance with the stroller and do so much with it, and it’s just the best gift that we’ve had. Ever since we got it, we’ve gone to do a lot more things, we’ve got to explore, and it’s even helping him with range of motion with his arms, and all kinds of things that we couldn’t do before.

It has changed our lives.”

Garrett’s grandmother, also named Laurel, highlighted what the stroller has meant for her, “I can’t push the wheelchair. We even have a ramp for the house, but I can’t get the wheelchair in and out. The stroller I can easily get in and out, so when I’m watching Garrett, we can go for walks, we can go out in the yard… it’s just a lot of freedom.

Variety could not be more grateful to everyone who made this memorable event possible, and gave freedom to 8 more kids at the start of the summer season!