COMMUNITY
GILBERT SUN NEWS | JANUARY 16, 2022
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EV female mountain bikers group rolling on BY MELODY BIRKETT GSN Contributor
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few years ago, Tiana Riccardi and Robin Lamb saw a need for a mountain biker group for girls and women only. The Mesa women already belonged to Hawesaholics, a group with more than 3,000 male and female mountain bikers of all ages and experience levels that Shawn Stenmark started in the name of Hawes Mountain, a popular haunt. So it was only logical to Riccardi and Lamb to start a spin-off group, Hawesaholics Babes Ride On so that girls and women would feel more comfortable in what has been a male-dominated activity. “I started riding 2 1/2 years ago and that’s when I met Tiana who was looking for other women to ride with more frequently,” said Lamb. “We went on a ride with four girls,” added Lamb. “Afterwards, Tiana said, ‘We should start a Facebook messenger group’ on the Hawesaholics Facebook page, people would post rides such as, ‘I’m going to ride at this trail, at this pace, on this day. Let us know if
Among the leaders of Hawesaholics Babes Ride On are, from left, co-founder Robin Lamb, beginners’ class instructor Gina Dwyer and co-founder Tiana Ricciardi, all of Mesa. (Special
to GSN)
anyone wants to come.’” “We had 50-100 members right away,” Lamb said, adding that HBRO now has almost 500 members. “It’s not meant to take away from Hawesaholics. They do a
ton of stuff every year such as group rides, rides for beginners, kids and families.” Like the larger group, HBRO started posting events with the first one being a ladies’ night.
“It was so much fun,” explained Lamb. “And it was crazy. Crazy in the sense that beginners showed up along with other girls who were total rock stars. People who can throw 50-foot jumps off of things that are fast and aggressive – really talented riders who’ve been doing it for a lot longer. All of them were having a good time and super excited to be there.” “That’s what ended up being so fun about our group is that we’ve seen people come out of the woodwork and be excited to make new girlfriends they can ride with. They still ride with the guys and enjoy doing that but it’s also fun to have girl time and girl camaraderie that comes through the group.” Because most of the “Babes” live in the East Valley, Hawes Mountain and the Hawes Trail System were immediate biking grounds “Most of us in the East Valley ride a fair amount of Hawes, a fair amount of Usery, depending on what kind of trails we like,” said Lamb.
see BIKERS page 24
Red Cross exec from Gilbert deploys to Kentucky GSN NEWS STAFF
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atrick Hodgkins, the chief operating officer for Red Cross’ Arizona-New Mexico branch, been assigned to the tornado-damaged area of Kentucky as chief of staff and COVID-19 Compliance Officer. “There’s pretty much no typical day,” said Hodgkins. “I’m located at the Disaster Relief headquarters. I work with the command staff on incident priorities, planning and execution. My team, the people who report to me, are the COVID safety officers. “Depending on where we are in a rota-
Patrick Hodgkins
tion of the Disaster Relief, I will have either two or three safety officers that I coordinate with that itinerate around the entire area of operation doing inspections and reporting back on them.” He said their key roles are to inspect, educate, resource and report on what they’re seeing and to support the workforce “and they’re also the eyes and ears.” “They report to me,” he said. “I compile their data, look for trends, look for action items, safety protocols, and work with the job director to ensure a safe workforce.” He also leads the Red Cross workforce care task force. “Priority item #1 is always COVID, any
COVID cases, any possible COVID cases, how we are dispositioning those cases and supporting the workforce through testing. Care and isolation are required,” Hodgkins said. “We look out for the volunteers and workers who are here, make it fun, comfortable and provide for them when they’re working long hours in a very sacrificial way,” he continued. “We have staff services, disaster health services, disaster spiritual care, disaster mental health. All of these are part of that workforce care task force.”
see RED CROSS page 24
