Tuesday Toolbox: Bruce Vermeulen

A few years ago, Bruce Vermeulen was injured in a harescramble. Luckily, the nature of his job allowed him to keep working, but he knew other riders weren't so lucky. Now, after almost 5 years, the organization he founded, RiderDown, is doing everything possible to help injured riders get back on their feet, from negotiating medical bills to sending care packages.

 

Bruce! What's going on at the RiderDown office today?
Well, the RiderDown office is always busy! I don't know if I told you before but it's not a part time gig, it's all volunteer. So I run it with my regular job.

You live in Colorado right? Is that where RiderDown is based?
That is where our headquarters is. But we have people in almost all 50 states that take up the cause at different times.

So what do you do for the organization, Bruce? Well, I'm chief cook and bottle washer and herder of cats! (laughs) Well you know, running a volunteer charitable organization is a task that was completely new to me when I started and it's been very rewarding and fun, but at the same time, it's very frustrating to keep everyone pulling in the same direction. It's a large organization, and we have our arms around a whole lots of different kinds of riders; from the average motocross rider to Baja to a weekend warrior who likes to ride the trails with his kids. That encompasses a lot of riding and a lot of injuries in a lot of areas. My job is to make sure volunteers are on task to make people aware of Rider Down. I also coordinate with promoters around the country. It could go on forever. One of the most important tasks is reviewing the rider intake forms.  We have a panel of rider advocates to review the individual rider's situation to see how we can best help, financially, or by providing connections to therapists, doctors, or support to the family. We work with quite a few different therapists. There's really quite a few medical organizations that we've come involved with as well.

How are riders brought to your attention? The most common way is through our website at RiderDown.org. On the Web site, there is a tab that says Injured, Need help? It brings up a rider intake form for information on the rider, their financial and insurance situation and then we reach out from there. Sometimes we get word of mouth news. Oftentimes, when a rider goes down the last thing the family is thinking about is getting on the internet and filling that out.

How many do you think you help in a year? We reach directly- close to a 100 riders every year and that's been growing every year.

 

And how long has the organization been around? Not quite 5 years, about 4 and a half.

How did you get involved with RiderDown? Have you been there since the beginning? I was the original founder.

Really? Why the decision to start? It was an idea that was rolling around in the back of my brain for about ten years. I was injured in a harescramble event and spent some downtime myself. I was fortunate in my job that I could still work and make money for my family. A lot of my friends, they would have been out of work for a longer time frame-if a rider had to say, climb a ladder, dig a ditch. I

had the idea that we had to do something for the average rider that's out there that doesn't have the fan base behind them. I thought, 'Let's have a system that has money already in place to help them provide for their mortgage or their medical bills instead of doing a raffle or a bake sale every time.'

Can the donated money go to anything? We try to do direct reimbursement of bills if possible. We have made direct payments to medical facilities, mortgage companies, we have paid contractors directly for making a home wheelchair accessible. Sometimes it's just the relief of a $1,000 to get through the next month. Another program that has been helpful is a medical bill review service to take a look at all the bills that pile up after a crash. Often times, if you are familiar with medical billing in this country,  those bills are not correct, or overinflated. This firm goes through and reviews these bills to make sure they are reasonable. We've been very successful in negotiating down the rider's responsibility. It's called American Medical Bill Review, and they are one of our partners.

Over the past five years, have you seen your organization change? Absolutely, when we first started Rider Down, we were very naïve about the types of injury and the extent we would be dealing with. We've placed a higher emphasis on spinal injuries and brain injuries/trauma. We try to be there long term for these people and hope those with a broken arm or leg understand that could be someone worse off out there.

Are you seeing a lot of those kinds of cases? We see a lot of those cases.  We continue to help them. It's not just a onetime help. We're very involved in different programs. We have a joint project right now. We've given out random checks to help riders get help for physical therapy, we set up a project called the RiderDown Laptop project where we acquire Dell laptop computers with voice recognition software for those with spinal cord damage. It gives them more freedom than in the past.

RiderDown sponsored the Snowshoe GNCC Golf Tournament. How did that go for? This year, the golf tournament was down a bit. We think the economy had some impact on that, overall it's a great program and we're very appreciative of the opportunity to host the RiderDown golf tournament.  We had a new sponsor come on, MotorcycleUSA.com sponsored the hole in one.  We hope to expand on that.

GNCC recently lost Hoyt Penland, a utility ATV rider. When he died his family asked for donations to RiderDown. Does that happen often as well? Unfortunately, we  get it very frequently. The first time it happened it really took me aback. Hoyt was a rider we helped get back from the Baja from Mexico to Georgia. We took him and other wheelchair bound riders to the Atlanta Supercross once as well. We like to do trips like that. Unfortunately, with some of these traumatic injuries that occur they don't always work out in the long run. We hope we've helped ease the family's burden. When someone like Hoyt passes away and those donation referrals come in, it lets us know we've touched these people in a positive way.

So we know RiderDown is involved in the GNCC world. What other areas does it reach out to? We are at quite a few AMA Pro Outdoor Motocross Nationals. We have a presence at these events. We are pretty active in the WORCS series. We've also been at many of the Endurocross events. We've had a physical therapist and a massage therapist there to help the riders if they need a back adjustment. We're at a lot of events, and larger national events around the country about every weekend. Tonight I have three volunteers flying into Henderson, NE to be at a display at the Best in the Desert series which is coming up this week. Not to mention the number of smaller tracks that on any given weekend you'll see a volunteer there spreading the word, and collecting donations. We have some promoters at some tracks who send us a small percentage of their gate fee after their events, too.

Bruce, where can people go to learn more about RiderDown? The best way to find out how to help is to visit us at  www.riderdown.org. It's an interactive forum about recently injured riders, riders we've helped and it has a lot of uplifting stories about riders that are recovering.

What if you want to volunteer? There is a volunteer form that you can fill out and submit. You never know when we will need a volunteer to deliver a care bag or a check to a rider in your area. So the first step is filling that out.  People can reach me with any thoughts comments or ideas at BV@riderdown.org

Thanks so much for spending time talking to us today, and for all the good works of RiderDown! Thanks, Rachel!