Seattle law student with ‘time on her hands’ finds bike helmets for hundreds of kids

If you’re going to be an overachiever, be one like Schuyler Peters.

Peters, a 24-year-old, third-year Seattle University law school student “had some time on her hands” — given her list of accomplishments, it’s hard to see how — so she found a problem and decided to address it, in the process providing bicycle helmets to hundreds of children at two elementary schools in Shoreline.

Named to the school’s law review last year and with an assignment to find a topic of legal interest and write an article, Peters landed on an examination of the King County Board of Health’s 2022 decision to repeal the county’s bicycle helmet law after being presented with evidence of discriminatory enforcement against people of color and those who are homeless.

“It seemed strange that they would rather repeal the law without trying to address the problem,” Peters said. “Yes, it was being enforced in a discriminatory manner. But what does it say when the health department goes against a law that clearly saves lives? I wanted to examine it.”

And she did, in a concise 22-page article published in the Seattle U. Law Journal last year titled “Pedaling Backward: Examining the King County Board of Health’s Choice to Repeal Its Bicycle Helmet Law.”

“The best way to address the [Board of Health]’s concerns about discriminatory policing while ensuring bicyclists’ safety is to work with legislators to provide robust and consistent funding, increase education for helmet use and access” and reinstate the law “without the punitive enforcement mechanism that the repealed law included,” Peters wrote.

Peters goes into significant detail on the history of the law, first implemented in 1992, and noted that at the time of its repeal it had strong support from hospitals, medical professionals, trauma experts, fire and police departments and other professionals who deal with the aftermath of devastating bicycle accident injuries.

Peters’ research showed an average of five bicyclists were killed each year in King County between 2018 and 2021. Harborview Medical Center, the region’s only Level One trauma center, reported treating 147 bicyclists each year in that period. “In 2016 alone, there were 17 bicyclists traffic fatalities in Washington state,” Peters wrote.

Her article also outlines the road that led to the law’s repeal, which gained momentum in June 2020 and was fed by the national outrage over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The Metropolitan King County Council declared racism a “public health crisis,” a finding embraced by the Board of Health, which adopted a policy shift away from a punitive criminal legal system.

Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a former councilmember who also sat on the Board of Health, was moved to suggest repeal of the law, which allowed law enforcement to cite individuals who weren’t wearing helmets and impose a fine of $40. Kohl-Welles said she was spurred by constituent complaints that the law was being unfairly enforced, with disproportionate effects on people who were homeless and people of color. Kohl-Welles would go on to be the sole health board member to vote against the repeal.

Other bicycle groups complained about the law’s enforcement as well, including a consortium of safe-street, bicycling and homelessness advocates whose research showed that fully half of helmet-law citations were issued to people who didn’t have a home, and argued the law was not effective in making people wear helmets, because most bicyclists — about 87% — already wear them.

Peters’ article suggests the Board of Health decision to repeal the law was a heavy-handed attempt to deal with the discrimination issue by throwing out a law that saves lives. She quotes Dr. Fred Rivara, a University of Washington professor and physician at Seattle Children’s hospital, who acknowledged the enforcement problem, but suggested the health board should focus on “how we can get helmets on people to protect their heads” in a fair way.

“When it made this choice, the BOH may have had the best intentions of eliminating the specific inequitable enforcement of the Helmet Law in King County, but it also took a massive misstep in actually ensuring that the county was keeping all people — including all protected classes and the most vulnerable — safe,” Peters wrote. “Furthermore, this decision brings an even harsher sting when considering that this repeal comes from the legislators who have the privilege of advocating ‘for the preservation, promotion and protection of public health.'”

In the years before the repeal, the county and other agencies provided some money for helmets. Peters’ research showed that at different times children could get free helmets at fire stations or police precincts. Those practices faded with funding, and now with the law gone, she’s unaware of any such publicly funded programs in King County, the state’s most populous.

“Creating solutions to increase helmet use and availability should be at the forefront of our minds,” Peters wrote.

The article was well-received, but Peters personally was left unsatisfied. It’s one thing to identify a problem, but another entirely to actually solve it.

“I was happy that I was getting published,” she said. “But people still didn’t have helmets.”

And here is where that thing about a high achiever having “spare time” comes into play.

Peters, who lives in Lake Forest Park with her parents and twin brother, Michael, has a remarkable record of getting things done. She graduated in 2017 from Shorecrest High School where she was an honors scholar, with a 3.75 GPA. While at Shorecrest, she was a two-year captain of the varsity swim team.

Peters attended Gonzaga University in Spokane from late 2019 through May 2021, where she was an intern with the history department.

“My project there,” she said, “was to look through the school and city’s archives and use them to create a digital timeline of the life of Spokane civil-rights icon Carl Maxey,” who attended Gonzaga law school and was a renowned student-athlete.

While at Gonzaga, Peters walked on to the school’s women’s rowing team and was coxswain for the school’s second varsity eight during the 2019-20 season, according to school records. She participated in the San Diego Crew Classic, where the team secured a third-place finish at the NCAA Championships. Peters was named to the West Coast Conference All-Academic Team.

She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2021 with a triple major — political science, French and psychology — and a minor in history.

While in law school, Peters served as an extern on the Washington Supreme Court.

During her first year of law school at Seattle University, Peters researched discriminatory zoning practices in Seattle stemming from the city’s first zoning ordinances, passed in 1923. Dissatisfied with the initial findings, Peters said she spent hours of her own time poring over the archives until she found the evidence she knew had to be there.

“I like to keep busy,” Peters explains.

Which brings us back to her dissatisfaction with merely writing a law review article about the issues surrounding bicycle helmet laws.

So, in typical Schuyler Peters fashion, she came up with a solution, at least on a small scale. It does not get at the groups found to be most affected by the repealed helmet law, but it’s a start.

“I called and emailed hospitals, fire departments, police stations and bicycle groups around the area and hoped someone would be able to explain how to fundraise to get even a few helmets on kids’ heads,” Peters said.

One of those emails landed in the inbox of Drew Swanner, a community health outreach project manager at Seattle Children’s, who had money and was looking for a cause to spend it on.

Peters and Swanner came up with a plan to give bicycle helmets to as many children as they could afford with money provided to Seattle Children’s by the Panda Express restaurant chain, through a program called “Panda Cares.” The effort is serving children at Ridgecrest and Meridian Park elementary schools in Shoreline. Schuyler’s mother, Denise, teaches fourth grade at Meridian.

“It was a good match,” said Swanner, who said they decided to provide a total of more than 1,000 helmets, and commit to doing it in the future.

The helmets, provided at cost by Tacoma wholesaler Helmets R Us, are foam padded and aerodynamic, with a clip-on visor. Colors were blue and red and the students, by most accounts, where thrilled to get them. Trained volunteers sat with each child and gave the helmet a proper fit at giveaways in the school auditoriums last month.

“This is pretty cool,” said 10-year-old Bill Ariunbold, who doesn’t have a bike, but gets around on a skateboard or scooter. It’s his first helmet, he said, it was “good to come to school and get a present.”

One table over, classmate Adonya Belay was pointing out to a volunteer that her new red helmet was a bit tight. While a strap is loosened, the 10-year-old says she “rides roller skates” and agrees that a new helmet will probably come in handy.