The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bikers deliver donated breast milk across NYC
Alyssa Marko, a member of New York City’s Sirens Women’s Motorcycle Club, got an emergency call in the summer of 2016 from someone in her Brooklyn synagogue.
A woman in the synagogue was adopting a premature baby and she wanted her tiny son to have breast milk. The caller asked: Could Marko jump on her bike and bring an order of donated breast milk to the hospital?
Marko grabbed her helmet and road jacket, slid onto her Triumph and headed straight to pick up 48 bottles of milk from the newly formed New York Milk Bank — a nonprofit group that distributes donated breast milk to new parents who are unable to produce their own or have an insufficient supply.
It was just days earlier that the Sirens had volunteered to help the milk bank with deliveries. And in a moment of her worlds colliding — biking and her synagogue — Marko got the call.
At the hospital that day, Marko, 55, a school psychologist who does not have children, said she was suddenly overwhelmed, realizing that the love of many women went into the milk she had delivered.
“Their immune systems and all of their strength were getting poured into this child,” she said. “It felt wonderful that I was able to bring him this wonderful gift.”
The New York Milk Bank was started in 2016 by nurse practitioner Julie Bouchet-Horwitz, who for years wished she could make life easier for new mothers who wanted to breast-feed but were unable to.
After Marko’s first milk delivery that day in 2016, it quickly became apparent to Bouchet-Horwitz that her partnership with the motorcycle club was a huge benefit, she said.
“I’d been looking for a convenient way to get milk transported from our processing facility [then in Hastings, New York] to Manhattan, when I saw motorcycles zipping in and out of New York traffic and decided, ‘That’s it,’” she said.
When Bouchet-Horwitz contacted the Sirens — the oldest all-female motorcycle group in New York City — they enthusiastically agreed to help.
“The world of breast milk donation was a foreign concept to me to begin with,” said Jen Baquial, 43, an electrical engineer from New Jersey who is the Sirens’ vice president. “But once I learned more about it, I thought, ‘Yeah, this makes sense.’”
Baquial said it was her honor to make the milk runs on her Harley.
“To watch these kids grow and thrive has been the coolest thing,” she said. “I’m waiting for that day when one of these little girls grows up and says, ‘I want to be a Siren.’”