Today we’d like to introduce you to David Kuntz
Hi David, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Detroit, the Motor City.
My father was an automotive engineer who put himself through college as a master mechanic. So, as you can imagine, there was a healthy appreciation for the automotive world in my formative years. One of the first things I remember my dad teaching me was how to change a tire. And while he and my three older brothers’ attention on automotive things focused on cars, I began dreaming about having a bike as early as I can recall. I remember being entranced by motorcycle scenes in movies like “The Great Escape” and “The Last Crusade,” even the light cycles in “Tron.” So I knew deep down from early on, one day…
In 2008, I commissioned in the Marine Corps as an officer immediately upon graduating Loyola University Chicago. As an artillery officer with 3rd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment my battery was deployed from our permanent station in Twenty Nine Palms to the Indo-Pacific on what’s called the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Nearing the end of that deployment I’d been able to save a little bit of money that I could put down on a bike. Harkening back to my roots, I wanted my first bike to be American Muscle so it was pretty obvious that I’d be getting a Harley, I just needed to decide what model.
In Okinawa, at one of the Marine Corps Exchanges, they had an office through which military members can buy new cars and they also sold Harley-Davidsons. So I figured I’d go in and see what they had available. The sales associate brought out a catalogue and I started flipping through it, a little disenchanted because I hadn’t seen any Harleys that were the EXACT style I wanted. And then I flipped a page and saw it – the Harley-Davidson Rocker C – and I immediately knew – I would have that bike.
It was exactly the style I wanted – classic chopper look, raked out, a breathtaking balance of precision machinery, raw power, and stunning elegance. I went through the process and placed my order for a Harley-Davidson Rocker C in Scarlett Red Deluxe.
Shortly after I started the paperwork, my battery commander called me and some of my fellow lieutenants into his office to let us know that we were going to be deployed to Afghanistan.
After we redeployed stateside, we would be allowed to take a little bit of leave and then detach from our battalion to 3rd Light Armor Reconnaissance Battalion to serve as forward observers in Helmand Province. Because of the tight timeline and because I had a lot of things to get in order back home prior to the second deployment, I needed to push the delivery date for my bike to after my anticipated return.
So, I went to Afghanistan and thankfully got back in one piece. And a few days after that, I received a call from Palm Springs Harley-Davidson letting me know that my newly built bike had been delivered and was waiting for me to pick it up. Quite a welcome home and if you’ve ever wondered if love at first sight is real, let me tell you, it is.
In 2012, I finished my active service and transferred to the reserves. I’d moved to Los Angeles because my unit was in an adjoining city and one of the things that made itself apparent to me very quickly was just how flourishing the riding community was in LA and the greater SoCal area.
Fast forward to 2014, I was assigned as the motorcycle safety officer of my unit. This was a “collateral duty,” an additional job beyond your “billet” or position within a unit structure. Commonly these are assigned when there is a program or function the commander needs administered but which doesn’t call for a specific billet in the unit structure.
At the time, I’d been feeling a drive and had been thinking of ways to get involved in my local community. With the new collateral duty, I was exploring whether holding periodic motorcycle rides was a requirement and I had the idea that if I did need to hold a periodic ride I should see if I could make it a charity ride.
I was discussing the idea with a friend, and she told me that she knew renowned burn surgeon Dr. Peter Grossman who had opened his skills and resources to the armed forces while he was in Kabul in 2009. She also told me how the Grossman Burn Center treated many firefighters and other first responders.
As a reservist I serve alongside a lot of first responders, so hearing how they had supported many of my fellow people in uniform I wanted to take my idea of holding a charity motorcycle ride and put it toward supporting them in turn. I asked if I could be put in touch with the Grossman Burn Foundation (GBF) and I was able to meet with them to propose my idea which they received enthusiastically and agreed to put on.
Coincidentally at the same time, Trevor Holtan, a burn survivor and avid motorcycle rider had bumped into an employee from the Grossman Burn Center at a concert in the park in the San Fernando Valley and raised an idea he’d ALSO had to hold a charity motorcycle ride to benefit burn survivors.
Trevor had suffered 3rd and 4th degree burns over 40% of his body in 1990 in a car accident where he lost his best friend and was treated at the Grossman Burn Center. He’d put it this way: he had spent years trying to determine the purpose of his suffering. He said, “I wanted to give back. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know what, but I loved riding motorcycles.”
Firefighters Quest for Burn Survivors, or “Quest,” another burn foundation, which was started after the 1994 Malibu Brush Fire, also had several volunteers who worked at the Grossman Burn Center. Quest and the Grossman Burn Foundation had worked closely together for years on joint projects in supporting burn survivors and their families.
Having had two motorcycle riders, Trevor and me, raise the idea for a charity ride, the two foundations brought us and a team of committee members together to begin planning.
Utilizing the fundraising expertise of the workers, dedication and enthusiasm from our volunteers – including retired firefighters and avid motorcycle riders – Trevor’s connections and experience with the Southern California motorcycle riding community, and our shared commitment to creating a well-executed and successful event, we were able to organize our first ride to benefit burn survivors in a few short months.
In September 2014, the first SoCal Burn Ride “poker run” was held, kicking off and ending at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas with local stops along a scenic route including iconic biker spot the Rock Store, Vintage Grocers off Pacific Coast Highway and fire stations along the way. With over 100 participants, many of whom complimented us on our organization, route, exciting prizes and great vibe, the event earned its place in the motorcycle community and helped provide necessary resources to the burn survivor community.
The ride continued as a joint presentation by the two foundations until 2017 when Firefighters Quest for Burn Survivors took things over entirely. Quest continued presenting the SoCal Burn Ride through 2021.
About the time Quest took over, Trevor and I were discussing the future and trajectory of the ride. It was becoming more established in the local biker community and we wanted to ensure our participants could be certain their support was going to help as many burn survivors as possible. Trevor and I had become more familiar with the breadth of programs the foundations administered for burn survivors and considering them, we came to the agreement that supporting burn camps would offer us the avenue to do that. So beginning then, the funds raised from the Burn Ride would be committed to these survivor support programs.
Burn camps are part of a collection of survivor support programs that focus on the psychological recovery of burn survivors and their families. You know, the medical recovery aspect of burn injuries is pretty apparent to most people. Less so are the mental and emotional aspects.
When someone is burned, they face a host of challenges for a good long while afterward, commonly for the rest of their life. You have cases where people have been disabled permanently and need to learn how to just get through day-to-day life all over again. Some of them never will without assistance. In many cases with kids, they will need to have surgeries well into adulthood as their scars need to be opened to allow for them to grow. Then you have the trauma of the experience they need to cope with along with the medical treatment and recovery which are absolutely excruciating and that’s to say nothing of having to cope with permanent disfigurement. It’s a lot, to put it modestly, and burn camps offer environments where survivors and their families can meet with others who are fighting the same fights they are or who have gone through them and can lend the wisdom of their experience and add to their support structure.
When we highlight these aspects of burn recovery, the issue resonates strongly with a lot of bikers. First, because a lot of people in the biker community work in the trades so many of them either have been or know someone who has been burned. But here’s also an interesting thing many people don’t know – if a biker is unfortunate enough to go down and suffer road rash, those injuries are actually treated as burn injuries.
All this being said, supporting burn camps seemed to Trevor and me to be the best place to direct the charitable funds raised by the SoCal Burn Ride. Quest continued to put the funds toward burn camps for the entirety of the time it presented the ride and in 2019, the Burn Ride became the sole funding source for its Winter Camp.
Unfortunately, in the wake of COVID-19, Quest was relegated to ceasing operations. Beginning this year, we started working with the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation (AARBF).
AARBF is the country’s oldest burn foundation which was founded in 1971 by the parents of Alisa Ann Ruch who, at age eight, was fatally injured in a backyard barbeque accident. You’ve probably heard the “Stop, Drop, and Roll” mnemonic for burn safety; that was created by AARBF.
As a way of continuing our tradition of supporting burn camps, the funds the SoCal Burn Ride raises go to support AARBF’s “Champ Camp,” which is a camp for child burn survivors. It has become the world’s largest burn camp for children, allowing approximately 150 children to attend this free experience annually.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The SoCal Burn Ride was fortunate enough to start strong and established itself within the Southern California motorcycle riding community as a well-organized, fun event with a great route that people could feel good about participating in.
However, as with most non-profit efforts that are volunteer led, some of the biggest struggles each year are establishing logistics in a timely and cost-effective manner, keeping things familiar but fresh, committing people and resources to ensure operational adequacy, and that promotional outreach is a shared undertaking.
Venue selection has also always been a challenge for us. Starting and ending at Sagebrush Cantina worked for us in the beginning as an established and familiar biker hangout, but in many ways, it did limit our vision. Even selecting stops along our route has to be seen through the lens of what parking is like for a large number of motorcycles and if there are any events going on in that area on the same day.
It can also be difficult to even discuss the possibility of hosting our event at certain venues, as some preconceived notions or stereotypes about bikers often underlie a place’s non-willingness to work with us, noting that the noise may disrupt their neighbors, or that they suddenly don’t feel they have enough bathrooms or that for some reason, we don’t get the non-profit rate.
While we often begin our event or stop at local fire stations to further highlight one aspect of the burn community and reinforce our reverence for first responders, we’ve also tried to simplify things by starting and ending at the same location, sometimes involving the veteran community such as the Disabled American Veterans headquarters in Canoga Park.
One of our biggest turnouts was when we ended our route at Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, but coincidentally and tragically, it burned down in 2018 during the Woolsey Fire.
So, while there is no shortage of great venues in L.A., finding one that’s in a scenic area, with adequate parking, that’s willing to work with us at a rate we can justify in order to raise the most money to directly help more children attend camp has often been a struggle.
The other California-specific obstacle for us has been competition. In pretty much any other area of the country having an event like this would be something people look forward to all year, while here in SoCal, where the motorcycle market is fully saturated, there are at least a dozen different events every weekend. It’s just a matter of which one people decide to attend that day, if any, because there’ll be a dozen more next weekend to choose from.
So really the ongoing challenge is the same as any other business or event: how do we stand out from the crowd each year and get people to come to our event and support our cause while staying true to our vision and working within our capacity?
Our biggest challenge to date, however, was actually coming back this year (2024) after a two-year hiatus. Trevor had moved to Texas a few years ago, and I was activated by the Marine Corps and served in Okinawa (again) from 2022-2023. With event participation, social media posts, networking with other riders, and communicating with past sponsors and vendors almost non-existent for two years, it was an uphill battle to regain traction… not to mention the fact that the ninth SoCal Burn Ride happened to fall on the day after Carmegeddon 2024, when the Dodgers won Game 1 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium and Game 2 would start less than an hour after our event ended. Some things just can’t be planned for.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Since its inception, the SoCal Burn Ride has always enjoyed participation from an engaged, positive community. We start with good people and our event attracts good people. These riders come out with their families – sometimes as passengers who, years later, we’ll see on their own bikes. We love seeing pictures of participants from 2014 still attending, ten years later, just as much as we love seeing new faces who just heard about the ride and were looking for ways to connect with more riders and give back to the community.
One specific attraction that has always been a trademark for us is our Ride N’ Repeat. This large, 8’ x 16’ banner with sponsor logos and our logo strategically placed to straddle the front and back of an average-sized motorcycle, set up near the entryway to our parking lot much like a Step N Repeat, allows riders the rare opportunity to have a free professional photograph taken of them riding their motorcycle. These photos are then available to download from our website, and we encourage riders to share on their social media.
Another way we like to support our biker community is through consistently giving back to those that support us. As one of the first events of our size to do Vendor Spotlights, we have always tried to feature local businesses that are present at our ride on our social media, cross-promote and attend their events, and leave their logos and backlinks on our website and in outreach emails throughout the year.
In fact, in 2021, when most events were canceled, we not only held a “Ride Anywhere, Support Local” campaign throughout the months of September and October, but made an extra effort to ride out to local businesses and create promo videos about what they’d be donating to winners. We then also met up with burn survivors individually and allowed them to select the winners through a random drawing (by pulling entries from a firefighter boot) and sharing live on social media.
We are also fortunate enough to attract participants representing all types of motorcycle styles (sport bikes, baggers, cruisers, trikes, customs, choppers, etc.), all skill levels (beginners to “peg-scraping canyon-carvers”), single riders to groups, MCs, women riders, families, couples, veterans, first responders, locals, out-of-towners, young people, retired folks and everything in between. When we say, “All Bikes Welcome,” we mean it. This was important to us from the start and maintaining that level of respect for everyone who rides continues to be a non-negotiable for us.
Another major make-or-break aspect of our event is having at least one well-planned route and sharing it with turn-by-turn directions as both a paper map to reference or as a click-to-navigate GPS link accessible through our website. While some motorcyclists enjoy easy or short, escorted rides in large groups, we find that providing riders with some solid options of which routes to take for a ride that fits their skill level – and then giving them the route so they can ride at their own pace, provides a safer, more enjoyable experience for everyone. People have come to expect to learn a new, fun route every year, and we’re proud to share with them even more ways they can enjoy the epic roads this area has to offer.
(See here for this year’s routes: https://www.socalburnride.com/2024-routes).
What do you like and dislike about the city?
As I’ve mentioned, there’s no shortage of great roads and scenic routes throughout Los Angeles County. Riding along PCH is on almost every American motorcyclist’s bucket list, and while we get to do it all the time, anyone who says ‘it gets old after a while’ isn’t doing it right.
There are plenty of ways to incorporate parts of the coastline into a route that includes curving canyons, vineyard views, mountain ranges; iconic passes like the Snake on Mulholland Highway, Topanga Canyon, Stunt Road, Latigo Canyon, Yerba Buena, Kanan-Dume Road, Decker Canyon – there’s nothing like coming around a tight hairpin turn and seeing the bright blue ocean on the horizon and we love sharing those experiences with our fellow riders.
Traffic, on the other hand, is not something anyone likes about L.A., and in some cases, can be a factor affecting the overall experience one has with our ride.
We also have to acknowledge the less prevalent but still relevant LA-ism of very few participants pre-registering for our event, choosing instead to leave their decision to attend and support our cause up to the last minute.
As most long-term residents know – no, in fact, it is not always 76 degrees and sunny in Southern California, and we do find that weather can play a factor.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.socalburnride.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socalburnride
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/socalburnride
- Twitter: https://www.x.com/socalburnride
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@socalburnride
Image Credits
Photos 1,2,3 & 8 = Jeff “Top” Thomas
Photos 4,5 & 7 = Dalton Richards
(Feature Photo and photo 6 can just be courtesy of the SoCal Burn Ride)
