Community Corner

EXCLUSIVE - Brooklyn Bike Patrol Founder: "We Will Come Back"

Jay Ruiz, founder of a service for seeing women safely home from the subway, had to get stents following two heart attacks.

Brooklyn Bike Patrol founder Jay Ruiz shut down his volunteer-run service for helping women get home safely from 55 subway stations throughout Brooklyn, after suffering his second cardiac arrest last week. 

Jay “Rocket” Ruiz, who is a 48-year-old dispatcher at a Manhattan bike messenger company by day, started Brooklyn Bike Patrol in 2011 to combat the spate of sexual assaults in Park Slope and South Slope by walking women from the subway to their homes safely.

Despite his daily exercise, which includes 100 pushups a day and riding 150 to 200 miles a week on his bike, he suffered two heart attacks—one on June 9 at 1 a.m. and the other in the middle of the day on June 10.

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“I can’t believe it myself. I am in the best shape of my life, doing 100 pushups a day. But I haven’t been watching what I eat,” Ruiz admitted to Patch during the only interview he gave the press after his heart attacks. “I don’t drink a lot of water, I drink a lot of energy drinks, diet soda and I eat whatever I want because I workout so much. I didn’t gain an ounce of fat all winter because Brooklyn Bike Patrol was so busy.”

But, what Ruiz didn’t know was that he had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. And with a diet packed with fried food and sugary drinks, his heart was becoming unhealthy.

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On June 9 at 1 a.m., he was biking from Grand Army Plaza to Brooklyn College to pick up a woman to walk her home. All of a sudden he felt was he thought was intense heartburn. He said that day he was too busy to have a healthy meal before going out on patrol, so he grabbed a few pieces of fried chicken and headed out.

“The pain lasted three hours and I had no other pain except what I thought was heartburn,” Ruiz said. “I went to work Monday, but took the train instead of riding my bike because I still didn’t feel great.”

For lunch he had chicken wings with ketchup, but by 3:30 p.m. he started to feel that same pain he felt on Sunday.

“I felt the pain again but it was much more severe. It was unbelievable,” Ruiz said, who also was vomiting for three days after the two attacks. “I still didn’t go to the hospital even though the intense pain lasted six hours.”

On Thursday he went to see his mother and he told her about the “heartburn.” She made him go see a doctor at a nearby clinic, since he does not have health insurance. Once with the doctor, they immediately sent him to New York Methodist Hospital on Seventh Avenue.

At NYMH, he got a CAT scan.

“Four minutes later I had 10 doctors surrounding me and they rushed me into an operating room. They put a stent into my heart,” Ruiz said. “When I woke up, they broke the news: ‘You had two heart attacks and have high blood pressure and high cholesterol.’”

At that point, the doctors told him he had to take it easy, keep his stress levels down and stop exercising until he can get his blood pressure and cholesterol down.

And that’s when he realized he had to quick his stressful job as a dispatcher and shut down Brooklyn Bike Patrol until his heart recovers.

“I am blessed and grateful to be here, I prayed to God and said ‘Thank you for keeping me on this earth,’” Ruiz explained. “But, I am mad at the world. This shouldn’t of happened to me. And now I have to shut down Brooklyn Bike Patrol’s service…. But, we will return.”

After breaking the news to his team (and to his clients and fans on Facebook), composed of six volunteers, they decided to shut down their service for the time being.

“My team didn’t think it was right to continue without me. We were walking one person a night during the week, but Friday and Saturday we would get six to eight calls a night,” he said, explaining that they patrol 55 subways throughout Brooklyn, from Park Slope to Bushwick. “The bottom line is that we won’t be closed forever. The Brooklyn Bike Patrol will rise again and we’ll be stronger than ever. Even with a damaged heart, I have more heart than anyone I know. I have never been a quitter and I will be back.”

For now, Ruiz has to rest at home and go to the doctor for check ups. However, he can’t help but keeping an eye on crime in the neighborhoods he and his volunteers have been patrolling for

“While I am down right now I am praying to God that I don’t read anything in the newspapers about a crime that we could’ve prevented,” he said. “There’s only six of us, but we were doing it. We were keeping Brooklyn safe and I am afraid for the public right now and I pray there is no crime.”

Ruiz started his volunteer-run program in September 2011, after there was a big jump in sexual assaults in the Park Slope-area.  

And although he promised his mother he wouldn’t return to Brooklyn Bike Patrol, he said he might have to break that promise.

“We will come back. Period. I don’t know if it’ll be a year or three months, but I have to come back. This is my baby, this is something I created and people loved it. I promised my mother I wouldn’t return, but I am really, really sad,” Ruiz said while almost crying. “When I come back I am going to be strong. I want to be back out there walking our women home. There have been no rapes while on our routes, and I know we can prevent them.”

Keep with Patch for updates on this story.


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