Sarah Hoover : APEX Youth Connection
- Brick + Tides
- Dec 23, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Jan 1
From the outside, Apex Youth Connection doesn’t try to impress you.
The building on Granite Street isn’t pretty. It’s scrappy. It looks like a place built for use, not for show. The kind of place that gets the job done and doesn’t apologize for it.
Inside, the order reveals itself. Bikes and bike parts are everywhere, but nothing is careless. Handlebars hang in clean rows. Cranks, chains, gears — all of it organized, labeled, ready. It feels less like a shop and more like a working system, tuned the way a good bike should be.
Behind the building, the property butts right up against Clifford Park. There’s no clean break between Apex and the woods — just a quiet handoff into dirt trails, roots, and miles of riding. For the kids who come here, the transition from wrench to trail takes seconds.
On the day we sat with Sarah Hoover, the temperature sat in the 20s. The wind cut through Granite Street. Snow edged the pavement. And still, she said, 15 to 20 kids would show up. They always do.
These are the kids who ride with metal studs screwed into their tires so they can grip ice and snow. The kids who don’t pack their bikes away for winter. The kids who roll in early, hang around late, and treat Apex less like a program and more like a second home.
Sarah Hoover, 31, program director of Apex Youth Connection, is responsible for keeping all of this moving. The space, the people, the rhythm of a place that doesn’t slow down just because Maine winter says it should.
“It’s a bike shop, but it’s not really about the bikes,” she said. “The bikes are a tool to get kids in the door.”
Sarah Hoover didn’t grow up in Maine. She’s not from Biddeford. She didn’t inherit this place.
She chose it.
She arrived in Biddeford as a student at the University of New England, drawn north from Wilmington, Delaware by a campus photo and a feeling she couldn’t quite explain at the time. UNE felt right. Biddeford felt smaller, slower, more human than the sprawl of cities she’d grown up around. While at UNE, she studied abroad in Spain.
And when graduation came, she stayed. At least for a while. She could have gone back home. She could have followed friends to bigger cities with louder opportunities and clearer ladders. Instead, she kept finding reasons to remain close to this stretch of Southern Maine, first through nonprofit work at United Way of York County, then as a volunteer at what was then the Community Bicycle Center.
Then she left.
in 2019, Hoover returned to Spain, moving to Madrid to teach English. She built a life there. Traveled. Learned what it meant to live far from Maine, Delaware and the USA.
But even then, Biddeford stayed with her.
She missed the open space. The access to the outdoors. The pace. The people.
So she came back.
Long before she was running programs, she was here because she wanted to be. “I lived right down the street,” she said. “And I just wanted to help out.”
That choice to stay, to leave, and to choose Biddeford again is written all over Apex now. In the way kids return day after day. In the way former teens come back as mechanics and mentors. In the way winter doesn’t thin the crowd.
Working at a nonprofit doesn’t come with clean edges or predictable days. It comes with responsibility that isn’t always visible until something goes wrong. Hoover carries that weight lightly, but it’s always there — in every program, every ride, every kid who needs a place to land between three and six o’clock.
“Sometimes I’m like, who’s trusting me for all this?” she said. “But so far, so good.”
Inside Apex, nothing feels accidental.
The bikes are the headline, but they’re also the excuse. Kids come for a tune-up, a tire, a frame from the attic upstairs — and then they stay. They stay because someone remembers their name. Because the rules are clear. Because respect isn’t optional, but belonging is.
Some kids are here for days. Others are here for years.
Sarah Hoover has watched that arc enough times to recognize it early — the quiet ones who hover at the edge of the room, the ones who don’t make eye contact, the kids who aren’t sure yet if this place is safe.
“It took them three months to even talk to me,” she said of two teens who first arrived barely speaking. “You’d say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ and there was … nothing.”
What changed wasn’t a single moment. It was repetition. Showing up. The expectation that everyone here respects themselves, each other, and the space.
Now those same teens are pre-apprentices. They answer phones. Help customers. Take inventory. Ride out into the streets with tools to fix bikes for neighbors. They look out for younger kids without being asked.
“The change is unbelievable,” Hoover said. “It’s because they feel safe here. They feel like it’s their community.”
The word "community" comes up often at Apex, but it doesn’t feel abstract. It looks like responsibility being handed over, slowly and intentionally. Ten hours a month in the shop. A stipend. A first job. A sense that someone trusts you with real work.
For some kids, Apex becomes the difference between wandering and belonging. “There’s a kid who used to get into a lot of trouble,” Hoover said. “Didn’t really have a place to go after school.” Now he shows up early. Helps with whatever needs doing. Runs errands. Learns bike mechanics. His grandparents tell the staff they’ve never seen him this focused.
“He has a community,” Hoover said. “He’s making healthier choices.”
Winter doesn’t thin the crowd
Behind the building, Apex opens directly into Clifford Park. Trails run through the woods. Dirt paths turn to snow paths turn to ice. For most places, winter is a slowdown.
Not here.
On cold, windy days — temperatures in the 20s — Hoover knows what to expect.
“Fifteen to twenty kids will still show up,” she said.
They arrive on bikes fitted with metal studs screwed into their tires, built to grip ice and packed snow. They ride anyway. They always ride anyway.
Apex supports that toughness quietly: lights, bells, helmets, studded tires — all provided through grants and donations so kids aren’t invisible on dark winter roads. Many of the helmets are donated by the Love Your Brain / https://www.michaelgouletfoundation.org Foundation.
“A lot of kids don’t have bike lights,” Hoover said. “And they’re expensive. Kids don’t have that money.”
So Apex fills the gap. No lecture. No judgment. Just what’s needed.
If a kid can’t afford the five dollars it takes to take a bike home, they help in the shop instead. If a bike is too small, they trade it in. If a tube pops, they walk it over.
The door stays open.
A nonprofit runs on people
Running a place like Apex isn’t just about programs. It’s about trust — from parents, from the city, from volunteers, from the kids themselves.
Volunteers show up week after week — bike mechanics, mentors, artists, engineers. Some bring skills. Others bring curiosity. One brought a 3D printer. Now there are four, and a club that meets every Monday.
Another volunteer helped launch the Bike Bus — a weekly ride to school that winds through Biddeford neighborhoods, picking kids up at driveways and street corners.
“We ride all winter,” Hoover said. “Bundled up, studded tires, straight to the front doors of the school.”
Volunteers line the route. The kids ride together. After school, almost all of them come straight back to Apex and stay until closing.
It’s structure without stiffness. Accountability without fear.
Youth-led, by design
Apex is growing, and opportunities for expansion come often. Hoover is careful.
“I always have to ask, is this our mission?” she said. “Is that what the kids want?”
To make sure the answer isn’t guesswork, she started a youth council — a group of kids who help shape the future of the organization.
She brings them the everyday questions.
“What snacks do you want?” “How do you want to volunteer in the community?” “What’s one small change that would make your day better?”
“That’s how we stay youth-led,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”
The programs shift with the seasons: summer camps, Youth Conservation Corps partnerships, bike mechanic certifications, Nature Classes, Lego Robotics, after-school programs at Biddeford and Saco middle schools. When a gap opens in the community, Apex tries to meet it — carefully, deliberately.
Not because it looks good on paper. Because kids need it.
Why she stayed
Sarah Hoover has lived far from Maine.
She worked in southern Spain at a summer camp in Cádiz. Later, she moved to Madrid, where she taught English for two years and lived through lockdown during the pandemic.
She loved it. The people. The energy. The sense of possibility.
But even there, she missed something else.
She missed open space. She missed being able to step outside and breathe. She missed the outdoors, the quiet, the way a place like Maine leaves room to think.
She eventually returned, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. She could have stayed in Spain. She could have returned to Wilmington. She could have chased bigger cities, louder paths, clearer titles.
Instead, she chose Biddeford a second time.
“I’ve always felt like Biddeford has a lot of soul,” she said. “People talk about the potential of Biddeford. But I think we’re living in it.”
She talks about the closeness. The way you can’t walk downtown without seeing someone you know. The way small businesses support each other. The way nonprofits overlap and collaborate.
“I’m not a born and raised Mainer,” she said. “But I spent really important years here. I learned who I was here.”
That choice to stay, to serve, to build something that won’t ever be flashy from the outside mirrors the place she helps run every day.
Full circle
Years ago, Sarah Hoover saw a photo of the University of New England — an aerial shot filled with trees and coastline — and felt something pull her north from Delaware.
She couldn’t have known then that the decision would anchor her here. That the quiet comfort she felt stepping onto campus would turn into a life built around showing up for others. That staying would matter more than leaving.
Today, that choice lives on Granite Street.
It’s there in the bikes lined up neatly against the wall. In the kids who ride through winter with metal studs gripping ice. In the fifteen or twenty who still show up when the wind cuts hard and the temperature drops.
A photograph brought her to Maine.
The work is what keeps her here.
Fabian Cruz-Thompson : APEX
Fabian Cruz-Thompson knows this place from the inside out. He’s 23 now. He first walked through the doors when he was 13.
“This place was my backbone,” he said.
When he didn’t have a meal at school, he came here. When there were family troubles, he came here. When he wanted to see friends, learn something new, or figure out a bike problem he didn’t know how to solve, he came here.“If I needed bike help or wanted to get better or something that I didn’t know how to do, I was here,” he said. Over time, he learned more than bike mechanics. He learned skills. Responsibility. How to stay.
Now he’s back, not as a kid in the program, but as the Lead Bike Mechanic. He's also a mentor to pre-apprentices and leads the bike shop.
“I teach kids how to fix bikes,” he said. “It’s a thing I grew up doing.”
He worked in professional bike shops. He got good. And then he returned to the same space that once held him up.
“This is my community,” Fabian said. “Now it’s the younger people’s community, which is really important.”
When new kids walk through the door, he recognizes them immediately.
“I see myself in so many kids,” he said. “The troubled ones. The good ones. The ones that I want to kick out every day.”
He laughed, then told the truth underneath it.
“I was that bad kid. Now I can totally help them to be a little better.”
Built from what was thrown away
Fabian’s creativity doesn’t stop at the workbench.
A few years ago, while running a bike shop out of his garage, he noticed a customer wearing a belt made from a recycled bicycle tire. The idea stuck.
“I looked it up,” he said. It was made in Germany. “It was forty bucks for shipping.”
So he went home and tried to make one himself.
“It was horrible,” he said.
Then he made another. And another. Slowly improving. Slowly selling. Today, Fabian has sold more than 450 handcrafted belts made from recycled bike tires. He sells them online and in person through his business, LaCruz Cycles.
“I’ve been hustling out these belts because I love them,” he said. “I know other people love them.”
It’s the same instinct that brought him back to Apex. Take what’s been discarded. Learn it. Fix it. Turn it into something useful.
Proof, standing in the room at Apex Youth Connection
Fabian is careful not to make himself the story. But his presence does something important at Apex.
When a kid struggles, he understands why. When a kid pushes limits, he knows what’s underneath it. When a kid sticks around day after day, he knows what that means.
He is what Apex looks like when it works.
A kid who stayed long enough to learn. Someone who left, got better, and came back. A mentor who knows exactly what this place can be because it once was that place for him.
Many thanks to Sarah Hoover, Fabian Cruz - Thompson, and the Apex Youth Connection staff for their time on Friday, December 12.
To learn more about Apex Youth Connection in Biddeford, Maine, please CLICK to visit their website.
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Photos and interview by Cy Cyr. Contact him at info@bricktides.com
