Hy-Tech Property Services Inc., a property management company out of Richmond, is donating 20 bicycles to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office to help in the office’s “Shop With a Deputy,” Christmas program.

“This is our 10th year (of) our ‘Annual Shop With a Deputy Program’ and every year it keeps getting larger and larger,” said Cumberland Sheriff Darrell Hodges. “Last year this company came in and said, ‘We like what you’re doing, we’d like to help. We normally buy bicycles and give those out.’”

He said last year they gave the office 12 bicycles.

“They have just been wonderful … to work with us like that,” Hodges said. “An average bike in my humble opinion is about $100 a piece so that’s $2,000 they’re donating to local kids here in our area.”

According to Will Jones, director of safety at Hy-Tech Property Services, this is the third year they’ve donated to the office.

“The first year we did it there was an overage of bikes, this whole thing started back in 2010 the Amelia Christmas Parents approached Marc Chimento, the owner of Hy-Tech Property Services about helping out with the toy drive,” Jones said. “So Marc decided that what we wanted to do was bikes based on the fact that he remembered, growing up they didn’t get a lot of expensive toys as a kid but he remembered one Christmas in particular getting a bicycle on Christmas morning, he knew how it made him feel.”

Jones said he decided to put his stamp on bikes so the kids that wouldn’t normally have Christmas would get the bike and have the same feeling. Jones said Hodges is his cousin.

“I called him one year, we had an overage of bikes, to find out if he had any ideas as to anybody who we could help with the bikes and come to find out he was doing similar thing as the Christmas parents in Amelia just at a smaller capacity,” Jones said. “But he was helping kids and families out in his county, as well, so we were able to donate those bikes, to those people and, that’s how it started.”