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Community helps owner after bikes were stolen

STEELTON, Pa. – Over the weekend, two bikes were stolen from a Steelton man’s home. Surveillance video shows three kids swipe them off his porch, bu...
STEELTON, Pa. - Over the weekend, two bikes were stolen from a Steelton man's home. Surveillance video shows three kids swipe them off his porch, but there's one more thing he wants in addition to an apology.

Sunday evening, Mike Wanner's kids noticed their bikes were missing.

"I'm just like, 'what are you talking about, so my wife immediately jumps into action and goes to the security cameras, searches, and says, 'oh I found the video'," Wanner said.

Though upset and shocked, Mike said he didn't want to call police initially. First he posted the video on social media hoping only for the bikes back, and an apology.

"Kids will be kids. Things happen. That's like telling a kid not to take a cookie from the cookie jar. It's going to happen. It's the inevitable," Wanner said.

The mother of one of the boys came forward and made the boy apologize. He did, and offered to do community service.

Meanwhile, the post is getting shared hundreds of times. Then, Todd Meledin stumbled upon it.

"I read the comments and looking at it I thought, 'well it's kind of what we do is give bikes'," Meledin said. "And heres's people not too far away from our house, stealing bikes ya know, it didn't make much sense to me."

Todd is the founder of Wheels of Steel. He fixes up bikes and gives them to kids and adults in Steelton who don't have access to one.

"He's like, 'hey if you can't recover the bikes I have bikes for your kids,' which immediately brought me to tears," Wanner said.

That's when Todd had an even better idea.

"Todd reached out to me and was like, 'hey you get a hold of those kids, send them up to me. They can work on bikes,' I was like, 'perfect opportunity'," Warner said.

"I could use some kids to come in and start doing some work for me there, not only learning something but getting involved in it and helping me out," Meledin said.

They're hoping to prevent more bikes from being stolen in the future.

"That's what this community needs. There are a lot of negatives and when we need to turn some of them into positives," Meledin said.

Todd plans on meeting up with Mike sometime this week, so he can give both of his kids two new bikes. Since May, Todd has fixed up and given away 23 bikes.

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