Ashburn Pastor Begins Bike Repair Ministry After Bike Is Stolen

ASHBURN, VA — Doing the Lord’s work has always come natural to Robbie Pruitt, even when it extends beyond his time on clock as an assistant rector at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Leesburg.

But when a stranger broke the seventh commandment and stole Pruitt’s mountain bike from his car carrier in October, Pruitt did not seek retribution but instead turned to one of the Acts of the Apostles that teaches that it is better to give than to receive.

What started as a social media offer of free bike repairs near his neighborhood in Ashburn has turned into Pruitt becoming the local fix-it man in a small operation run out of the 20x20 laundry room in the basement of his house. Since October, Pruitt estimates he has fixed nearly 160 bikes with parts he has spent $1,500 of his own money buying on Amazon along with those that have been donated by people looking to give Pruitt a helping hand.

Since posting his offer to fix bikes in the private Loudoun County Facebook group, Pruitt has received more than 500 repair requests through the page for what he considers mission work that has more to do with his core beliefs than it does with his day job.

“The community is the major part of it,” Pruitt told Patch in a FaceTime phone interview last week. “I’m a follower of Jesus and the Bible says, love your neighbor as yourself. Well, you can’t love anybody you don’t know.

"The bike thing is just a connection with the kids and I would have no way to connect with these kids besides through bikes. We already have something in common.”

Pruitt’s laundry room is now filled with bike chains, handlebar grips, brake levers and cables, tire tubes of all sizes, seats and a bike rack, which he uses to work on the bikes that find their way into his makeshift shop.

Just last week alone, strangers who have learned of Pruitt’s bike mission donated six bicycles in need of repair. The bikes are in addition to the donation of parts and money that will assist the 44-year-old priest fixing the bikes, which are then donated to people in need. His bike repairs have also provided Pruitt with a point of connection with neighborhood kids that he now rides with on a nearby mile-long bike trail where they are now attempting to best Pruitt’s top time of 7 minutes.

But the side work has also introduced him to strangers, some of whom he has taught to fix bikes in his back yard while masked and socially distanced. Pruitt once fixed six bikes on one Sunday afternoon when someone asked him to stop by her house on his way home from church. The woman ended up donating two bikes to Pruitt’s effort, which has grown at a much faster pace than he ever expected when he made the initial Facebook post.

“It just occurred to me that I had a skill and that I have a job that I don’t work with my hands, but I’m handy,” said Pruitt, who has three children – Grace, Hannah and Simeon — who range in age from 7 to 1 and who once repaired bikes during a five-year ministry stay in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.

“But you would never expect it to be a thing where people just end up giving you bikes.”

The thief who took Pruitt’s bike in October wasn’t the first to do so. Although Pruitt has used the incident for good in his community, he is honest to admit that while he believes whoever took his bike may have needed it at a time when bicycles are hard to come by because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, he is still bothered by the fact that his bike was stolen. At the end of his first Facebook post to the private group in Loudoun County, Pruitt wrote that he hoped and prayed that the bike served the needs of whoever stole it off the back of his Honda Odyssey.

“It ticked me off like you would expect it would,” said Pruitt, who fixed and gave away three bikes on Christmas Eve. “I think that’s the piece that gets glossed over — people think I’m this guy who doesn’t get mad. I got pissed like you would expect, but you don’t sit on that. What’s done is done. I can get mad about it or I can move on.

“I mean, how blessed am I? My bike gets stolen and I can go get another one. Not everyone – especially in a time of COVID – can do that.”

Before posting his offer on a local Facebook group to fix bikes, Pruitt had rescued a bicycle from a trash can and fixed it up before fixing the bikes of six neighborhood kids. His initial social media post led to him fixing up 30 bikes before the operation really took off. Pruitt has lost track of the number of hours he has spent on bike repairs, which range from minor tweaks to complete overhauls of bikes he finds in local dumpsters.

The extension of his church ministry came out of the fact he is working from home as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Rather than devoting time to his normal hour-long, round-trip commute he has to the church and the time he would normally be keeping office hours or meeting with people at a local coffee shop, Pruitt now meets with folks at his home, which gives him time to tinker with bikes — which are then being provided to people in need at no cost.

A woman has donated a bike trailer to Pruitt, who plans to extend his repair operation beyond his home once the weather allows. He would eventually like to throw his tools in the trailer and travel to a nearby apartment complex to fix bicycles as part of a repair workshop to teach others the tools of a trade Pruitt has enjoyed since he has enjoyed since he was a kid growing up in South Carolina.

Pruitt carefully logs each bike he takes in and repairs. He takes photos of each bike and then posts the pictures on the Facebook page to alert the public he has another bike ready for pick-up. Usually, within a day of posting he has a bike to give away, the bikes are spoken for. In many cases, the parents who show up to claim bikes, cannot otherwise afford them for their children – something Pruitt said he cannot imagine not being able to do for his own kids.

Often those who are the recipient of the repaired bikes don't know how to respond and simply tell Pruitt that the gesture has provided them with something they otherwise couldn't afford. His bikes have since been given as Christmas and birthday gifts while others have gone to children who don't have a bicycle of their own.

“I am blessed every time,” Pruitt said of knowing that his bike repairs are helping others. “It’s addictive. You can’t manufacture that feeling….You can’t beat that feeling of joy and relief you see.”