Peabody Resident Eyes Trishaw As Way To Get Seniors On The Move

PEABODY, MA — It has been more than a year since Carol White stepped into her 88-year-old mother's room at the Jeffrey & Susan Brudnick Center for Living in Peabody.

For a long time at the start of the coronavirus health crisis, she did not see her mother, Lois, at all. Now she gets to see her in special visitation areas set up in the community room or right outside the facility. But whenever she does, she knows it could be the last time for a while as senior living centers continue to experience rolling lockdowns whenever a positive coronavirus case arises among staff or residents.

"If you are not involved with someone in a long-term care facility you don't realize this," White told Patch. "It's been shut down pretty hard. As soon as they get another case, they shut down again."

With the majority of state seniors and senior facility staff now vaccinated — and the pandemic hopefully in its waning months — Wilson has high hopes for seniors like her mother that involve not only get them back having visitors in their rooms and outside in the coming months, but also back out on the road.

Early last spring, White said a colleague introduced her to "Cycling Without Age" – an organization that teaches cycling enthusiasts how to operate a trishaw, which is a seat at the front of the bike where those with mobility issues can be safely pedaled about on bike paths and secure areas. Some trishaws include a canopy to help protect passengers from the sun or other harsh weather conditions.

White said she was immediately intrigued with the idea and what that could mean for those like her mother, who is in the Peabody facility's dementia program and cannot get out on her own.

"Watched a few videos and got hooked," White said. "I said to (my colleague): 'I want to do this now, not when I retire!'"

It was just when White was ramping up her fundraising efforts that the onset of the pandemic hit.

Now, more than 13 months later, she is ready to start her mission again.

"I thought it was an amazing program before COVID," she said. "Now I think it is needed more than ever."

White said her mother had the coronavirus and like a lot of her fellow residents she recovered. She allowed there were others in the facility who did not recover. But all of the residents have been largely shut in for the better part of a year.

"The isolation was an issue before COVID and now it is tenfold," she said.

The trishaw — which resembles a reverse rickshaw with the seat in the front instead of the back of the bike — is popular in Europe and other parts of the country, but White concedes it hasn't taken off in New England as it has in other places.

She is hoping Peabody can be a place where seniors can soon benefit from having multiple licensed drivers in the area.

She said she has raised about $3,000 of the $12,000 to $16,000 necessary to buy a trishaw from a Warwick, R.I. bike shop that imports them from the Netherlands.

White has started a GoFundMe page and is also accepting direct donations through Venmo @Carol-White-37.

"I am not doing it so I can horde it," she said. "I would donate it. The whole thing is to get it going in the community. If we could get three or four of them that would be awesome."

She said the goal now is to get the donations so she can bring the trishaw to Peabody and show its benefits in person, as well as get senior facilities in the city on board with the program's potential to stimulate residents when they are allowed more activities away from the homes as pandemic concerns fade.

She said she envisions most of the rides taking place on the Independence Greenway and hopes that once fellow bikers spot her trishaw it will spark enough interest that several people might purchase one and go through the short video and practical training necessary to operate it as a volunteer in the city.

"It's a very, very cool thing," she said.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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