At Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange, our volunteers are the heart of everything we do. Each quarter, we spotlight one of the extraordinary individuals who give their time, skill, and spirit to our mission. This quarter, we're proud to recognize Craig Jeong — a wheelman, athlete, and quiet force for good in the Silicon Valley cycling community.
Volunteer and wheelman Craig JeongThere's a word Craig Jeong uses to describe himself, and he doesn't say it with any particular pride — just as a matter of fact. Driven.
It's the right word. Craig has competed at elite amateur levels in basketball, volleyball, softball, badminton, and bowling — a sport in which he bowled four perfect 300 games, an 800 series, and once picked up the near-impossible 7-10 split. Over three months, he trained seven colleagues at HP to complete the Death Ride — 129 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing through the Sierra Nevada — a feat he himself accomplished ten times. He earned a California Triple Crown, the distinction given to cyclists who complete three double centuries (200-mile rides) in a single calendar year. He built his first road bike frame in high school, with his dad welding the Reynolds 531 steel while Craig did the filing. He learned to build wheels from scratch during recovery from one of his six surgeries, because he figured if something went wrong going 40 miles an hour down a mountain pass, he wanted to be the only one responsible.
Craig has been volunteering at nonprofit bike shops for over a decade — with Good Karma Bikes, then Community Cycles, and now Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange, where you'll find him Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. About eight years ago, the relapsing-remitting MS he'd been managing since 1998 turned secondary progressive, and the two-wheelers he'd trained on, raced on, and maintained for decades became something he could no longer ride. He's found his way back on three wheels now — a recumbent tricycle that lets him keep moving. The volunteering didn't start because of that loss — but it's part of what keeps him going through it.
He calls himself a wheelman — not a mechanic, not a volunteer, a wheelman — because building wheels is what he does, and he does it with the same patience and process he learned recovering from surgeries that would have sidelined most athletes for good.
But ask Craig why he keeps showing up, and he'll tell you about a fellow volunteer at Community Cycles — a man who had served 21 years in prison for murder and was rebuilding his life one shift at a time. He stocked the shop freezer with ice cream out of his own pocket every week. When his girlfriend was diagnosed with four kinds of cancer, he became her full-time caregiver. Craig drove him to the DMV to get his license back, and eventually took them both to a Giants game in prime seats behind home plate.
"It made me believe in redemption," Craig says. "I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."
That's what the bikes are really about for Craig — not the mechanics, though he's meticulous about those. It's about the veteran who needs reliable transportation to a job interview. The person recently released from incarceration who just needs someone to hand them a tool and teach them something. The low-income commuter for whom a working bicycle isn't a hobby, it's a lifeline.
Craig has lived enough — the surgeries, the MS, the decades of sport, the losses and comebacks — to know that the quality of a life isn't measured in what you accumulate. It's measured in what you're able to give, and whether you show up to give it.
He's there Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Look for the wheelman.
