DEPUTIES TO GIVE NEEDY CHILDREN UNCLAIMED BIKES.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

About 50 needy children will get a new bike for Christmas this year thanks to an unusual program that releases and repairs bicycles currently locked up in impound yards.

The Ventura County Sheriff's Department will distribute the bikes - including 10-speeds, training wheels and mountain bikes - to impoverished youngsters through the Salvation Army and El Concilio later this month. Sheriff's Capt. Mike Ball said he hopes the program strengthens the department's relationship with the community.

``What we lose in revenue we easily make up in positive community impact,'' Ball said.

The Sheriff's Department collects about 100 abandoned or stolen bicycles every year. Traditionally, the bikes are sold at a public auction, but the sale of bicycles nets only about $50 a year, Ball said.

Most bicycles the department collects are never recovered by their owners.

``It's kind of amazing that so many bikes never make it back to their rightful owners,'' he said. ``A lot of people just don't record serial numbers. When they lose their bike or it gets stolen, they don't report it. Or if they do, we can't track it.''

The bicycles are being repaired by inmates at the Ojai Honor Farm. The inmates fix the bikes that are salvageable and mix and match parts of those bikes beyond repair, he said.

``We recover some like brand new and some that are almost trash - someone has vandalized them, jumped on them or smashed them into little pieces,'' he said. ``We cannibalize them and end up with one really nice bike out of 10 pieces of trash.''

The bikes will be given to children by a senior deputy dressed as Santa during the department's annual giveaway to needy children.