Davideen Werner has been donating bikes to kids and adults in need through Alpert JFS for decades.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — For more than two decades, this week’s “Hometown Hero” has been steadfast in her mission to make sure less fortunate kids in our community do not feel forgotten, especially around the holidays.

Every year, Davideen Werner donates several dozen bicycles to those in need at Alpert Jewish Family Service.

Davideen was presented with a 2025 Annual Volunteer Award for her dedication and commitment to improving lives.

The nonprofit provides behavioral health, mental health, and care management services for children, adults, seniors, those with special needs, and Holocaust survivors.

She says her bike donation started as a solo mission for the agency after she donated just one bicycle to a little boy in need.

Now, 25 years later, it’s grown into a community effort.

Davideen lines the bikes in the lobby of her building, and it motivates her neighbors to give as well.

“I just started, you know, I would buy a bike and then I would tell all my neighbors, I’m going to buy a bike, and they would give me money,” she says. “And midnight Thanksgiving, we would go to Walmart and buy the bikes.”

Davideen says seeing the smiles on the kids faces makes it all worth it.

“We saw one little girl riding a bike around the lake a couple days after she got it, and we knew it was our bike, and her smile was from ear to ear.”

The CEO of JFS, Marc Hopin, says the bikes are typically gifted to those in their ‘Mentoring 4 Kids’ program and some other families associated with the agency.

“These are kids and families that feel like nobody realizes what’s going on with them,” he explains. “They feel forgotten, they feel left out, and to know that that they aren’t forgotten, that they haven’t been left out, that there is going to be a gift for them for the holidays, it just means the world to them.”

In total, she has given about 40 bikes a year for the last 25 years. Her message to others: “You have to help when you can.”

To recognize Davideen and her commitment to helping others, Alpert JFS just honored her with their annual “Volunteer of the Year” award.

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