Have you seen this trailer? Mobile skate park for kids stolen from Lakewood mall

Editor’s note: The trailer has been located, read the updated story here. 

A thief on Wednesday stole a trailer from a parking lot at Lakewood Mall that contained a mobile skate park for kids.

Skate Kids, which has been running in Long Beach for about four years, serves about 70 kids each week through skateboarding lessons, camps, after school programs and group lessons. Former pro-skater and Long Beach native Kurtis Colamonico started the business after his son was born and it quickly grew.

On Wednesday, Colamonico parked his SUV with the trailer attached through two adjoined parking spots at the Lakewood mall around 6 p.m. He was stopping to get a bite to eat and get some work done at George’s Greek Cafe.

When he left the restaurant around 6:50 p.m., his trailer was gone.

“It almost made me second guess myself, thinking maybe I brought it home,” Colamonico said.

He immediately called the Sheriffs Department and asked the restaurant if any of their security cameras showed the theft. All of their cameras point at the restaurant rather than the parking lot, so they didn’t catch anything.

The trailer is 6-by-10 feet and white with photos of kids on skateboards and ramps and the Skate Kids logo on the sides.

In this file photo from Sept. 1, 2018, Kurtis Colamonico (right) teaches 12-year-old London White how to pump while ridding half pipe during Skate Kids. Photo by Drew A. Kelley.

Colamonico said the thieves must have had to pick up the heavy trailer and roll it out of the parking spot by hand before they could have attached it to their vehicle.

One family at the restaurant told him that they noticed the trailer still in the parking spot around 6:30 p.m. because they were admiring it on their way in to get dinner, so it would have been stolen in a small 20-minute time period.

Colamonico and his friends have been posting about the missing trailer on Facebook and social media, desperately asking Lakewood and Long Beach residents to keep an eye out.

“There’s a whole mobile skate park in there—all stuff for the kids,” he said.

He estimates that the trailer is worth about $3,000 and the equipment inside is worth about $7,000.

“I’m trying to get my head around it, what do they think they’re going to do with it?” he said, adding that the skate park equipment is specially designed for kids and would be hard to sell.

While he was waiting for a sheriff’s deputy to come take a report, Colamonico started calling around to make sure he could still teach the rest of the week’s lessons.

“I thought, ‘These kids are going to be so bummed,’” Colamonico said.

In this file photo from Sept. 1, 2018, Kurtis Colamonico teaches 7-year-old Alice Li how to turn while ridding a skateboard. Photo by Drew A. Kelley.

Luckily for the kids, Keen Ramps is loaning Skate Kids ramps and DarkStar skateboards is providing the business with skateboards to use for the lessons.

So far, the only lead Colamonico has is a friend of a friend telling him on Facebook that they saw the trailer around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday night going down Graywood Avenue. They remembered the trailer because they saw it wasn’t attached properly, causing the fender to drag and threatening to cause a flat tire.

If you see the trailer, please report it to the Lakewood Sheriff’s Department at 562-623-3500 and ask for Detective Doke or Detective Gallegos.

Valerie Osier is a breaking news reporter for the Long Beach Post. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ValerieOsier

Kurtis Colamonico is breathing a sigh a relief after a nerve-wracking night in Compton trying to get his Skate Kids trailer back home.

The trailer, filled with all the equipment for his mobile skate park business, was stolen Wednesday night from the Lakewood mall while Colamonico was eating dinner.

He spent the next 24 hours frantically posting photos of it on social media, asking if anyone had seen the trailer.

Colamonico uses the trailer and the equipment inside to teach kids how to skateboard in after-school programs, group lessons and camps. Skate Kids has been in business for four years and has been part of Long Beach’s Beach Streets event since 2016.

He didn’t get any leads until the Beach Street Facebook page shared his plea for help. A woman messaged his own page and the Beach Streets page with the exact address where she saw the trailer in Compton.

“I just went and grabbed some friends and drove there,” around 10 p.m., Colamonico said.

They called police, but they said they couldn’t come out to assist in recovering the trailer.

Luckily, the trailer was unhitched on a street in front of a house in Compton. But, the thieves had broken the winder for the trailer stand, so they couldn’t just attach it to his car and drive it away, he said.

He and his friends ended up making enough noise that someone called the police, and deputies arrived. Colamonico had all the paperwork and the original police report to prove the trailer was his, so the deputies ended up helping them break off the stand with a sledgehammer and released the trailer into his custody.

“It was a little scary at first, there were cars driving around real slow and making U-turns,” on that street, he said. They finished attaching the trailer and left the area around 1 a.m.

The thieves had also spray painted over the Skate Kids logo and contact information that was on the trailer, broke the back door so it can no longer close all the way and removed the license plate.

Most of the equipment was still inside the trailer—just jumbled—but the skateboards were gone.

The trailer is still usable, but he has to make some repairs. He has already bought some new skateboards, so he can teach today’s lessons.

“I’m thankful, at least I have it back,” Colamonico said. “We’re back in business, just a little uglier.”

Valerie Osier is a breaking news reporter for the Long Beach Post. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ValerieOsier

When Long Beach native Kurtis Colamonico looked out on the more than 70 kids who came to the Skate Kids demo session at last month’s Beach Streets, he saw it as proof of how far his skateboard-tutoring business had come.

It was a high point for the former professional skateboarder turned dedicated father—a guy who has a tattoo on the entire front of his torso dedicated to his hometown. Working with a handful of other pro and amateur skateboarders also on his payroll that day, Colamonico and the Skate Kids team coached the dozens of giddy elementary school kids through their first balancing act on a board.

The idea for Skate Kids started in 2011 when Colamonico’s son Kruz was born. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fully embrace fatherhood if he were skating with his friends or traveling for competitions full time, he decided it was time to trade in the board that brought him success throughout the 2000s for something more sustainable. Watching Kruz take to that same board as a toddler was all it took to inspire a whole new second career.

“He opened up my eyes to teaching other kids, because I was getting older and knew I couldn’t skate forever,” Colamonico, now 34, said. “I’d always wanted to be a teacher, so when I was thinking about what I could fall back on, I figured why not teach what I love?”

In 2014, Colamonico founded Skate Kids and began offering private skateboarding lessons to kids all over Long Beach and Orange County. But what started as one-on-one and small-group lessons slowly evolved into a more impactful business.

Because of Colamonico’s connections, major skateboarding companies donated equipment to host bigger events—such as week-long summer camps—while school districts and city governments began to shed the outdated negative attitudes towards skateboarding that Colamonico himself dealt with growing up. Soon, he was getting contracts to run after-school programs at elementary schools and for at-risk teenagers in Yorba Linda and Anaheim.

In 2016, Colamonico signed a contract with the city of Long Beach to teach his craft at the bi-annual transportation-focused Beach Streets events. While he’s still working on spreading his on-campus, after-school program into Long Beach schools, through regular events—plus the lessons, camps, and birthday parties he hosts both at local parks as well as in the driveways and neighborhoods of private client—allow the mentor to spread his skateboarding love across the city where he himself first learned the sport.

“Being back in Long Beach and teaching the kids here is a dream come true for me,” Colamonico said. “I grew up skating El Dorado [Skate Park] and some of these other parks, so now it’s like it’s all come full circle. I love Long Beach and the people here, and I’m looking forward to doing a lot more in Long Beach in the next year or two.”

With Skate Kids’ recent growth, Colamonico has moved beyond his original focus of teaching dedication, health and creativity through the art of skateboarding and now also teaches workshops where students learn to take apart and rebuild their own skateboards. Aside from helping kids develop a better understanding of the board itself, he believes that working with the small tools develops fine motor skills in ways they might not otherwise get.

“I try to integrate everything I can to help the kids excel as fast as possible in so many different ways through skateboarding,” Colamonico said.

Of course, Colamonico is also learning plenty of skills himself as his business expands. Just like how he once put hundreds of hours into improving his tricks at the skate park, the entrepreneur’s latest tricks are all learned on his laptop. Corporate basics like composing an email used to take him hours, but they’re now done in 15 minutes. Managing his own schedule used to be a challenge by itself, but now he’s hoping to open Skate Kids up to other professional skateboarders looking to step down from the competitive scene.

More than anything, the biggest lesson he’s learned has been the same one he teaches on a daily basis.

“It’s really just about not giving up, which is the same thing I preach to the kids and the same thing I did during my skateboarding career,” Colamonico said. “I’ve watched a lot of people get so close to breaking ground following their dreams, but then they go back to working a 9-to-5 because they need it at that moment. Skateboarding taught me to live through that struggle in order to succeed. It’s been a lot of learning, working and focusing, but I get to see hundreds of kids smiling and skateboarding now because of it.”

For more information, visit WeAreSkateKids.com or email [email protected].

Read the full article on Long Beach Post.

The world-renowned skater’s priorities may have changed, but his passion hasn’t one bit.

Kurtis Colamonico has been one of the best skateboarders in the world for well over a decade. He’s traversed the globe with a who’s who of skating history and competed in several of the largest competitions of the last 15 years.

But that’s not really what he’s spending his time on anymore.

These days, one of Long Beach’s favorite skateboarding sons is more concerned with raising the next generation of Tony Hawks, Chris Coles and Ryan Shecklers. Colamonico started getting more into teaching the youth to skate (through his business, Skate Kids) after his son was born and his priorities shifted.

Myspace managed to find some time in Colamonico’s schedule (between skating, instructing, and being a dad) to talk about his skateboarding career, his new business and how he started skating.

Not a whole lot of professional skateboarders out there would want to spend their time teaching kindergarteners to kickflip at the end of their skating career. How did Skate Kids come about?

Skate Kids started because now I have a 4-year-old. Skateboarding has been my passion for over 20 years, I actually wanted to be a kindergarten teacher when I was growing up. I said, “Hey, let’s take it to the next level and combine the two.” With Skate Kids, I’m happy, my son is happy, the kids I teach are happy, their parents are happy. It just made sense for everyone.

You gotta do what you love. I was working at an auto body shop to make some extra money because some of my old sponsor companies moved out of action sports, and I just wasn’t happy. When I first started doing Skate Kids, some parents were iffy because of my look, but now it’s doing great just from word of mouth.

Obviously, you teach kids to skate, but how does Skate Kids actually work?

It’s really just me, so I try to take care of as much as possible. I do camps during the holidays. I do skatepark tours. I’ve been doing some private lessons, because I wish I had a pro to teach me when I was growing up instead of learning on my own. I’m still learning the business, because other companies have been doing stuff for a while, but I’m still pretty new at this.

I’m teaching the kids balance and how to work hard. I love watching them build the confidence to stand on the board first, and then they start building confidence toward doing a trick until eventually they just go for it. I also provide the equipment for kids to use when they’re getting started. Darkstar is giving me boards and pads for the kids. A bunch of sponsors are really into it, even some of the hard to get ones are sending packages. I think about what I wanted as a kid, and I try to provide all of that.

How did you get into skating when you were a kid?

I think I’ve had a board since I was 4 years old, but it wasn’t until I was 11 that I decided it was really what I wanted to do. At first, my family didn’t believe it could be anything, but I just stuck with it. I got a job at 16 and saved up for a double tail board, and now I’m 31 and still riding a skateboard for a living. I used to just hop right back up, but now it takes a little longer to recover. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same. It’s awesome that my kid loves it now too. I don’t pressure him about it, but he does it all on his own. He’s the only kid I work with who doesn’t listen to me.

What was it like becoming a pro skater?

More than anything, it was really hard. I loved it, but it definitely wasn’t easy. My parents split up when I was young, and I moved with my dad to Huntington Beach. I would hop on the bus to go to the skatepark, but I had to hide it from my dad because he didn’t like it. That was back in the day when a lot of pros would be at the skateparks around there, it was like a meeting spot for them. For me, I wanted to show off and impress them.

I really wanted to skate for Furnace (Skate Shop), so getting that was really cool. I met Andrew Reynolds and Chad Fernandez at the skatepark one time, and they brought me into World Industries. They told me to take whatever I wanted, so I think I walked out with like 15 skateboards and like 20 tees. I gave all my friends boards and shirts, it was like 10 Christmases all at the same time for me.

I became an amateur and my family still didn’t agree with me. They were hard on me about it, but I just told them to watch. If you want something enough, you have to go get it. My shoulder popped out like 100 times during that time, but I knew I couldn’t take time off to fix it because I was so close to becoming a pro. I wanted my name on a board more than anything.

I got my first pro board through World Industries, and immediately had shoulder surgery because I figured they’re not going to cut a guy they just signed. I had to go six months without skating, but then after that is when I started doing things like the Dew Tour, and everything just took off.

Read the full article on MySpace.

Kurtis Colamonico spent most of his life learning and perfecting new tricks on his skateboard, but after the birth of his son and the end of his professional skateboarding career, he knew he needed to shift into something new.

These days, Colamonico’s time goes primarily to learning the ins and outs of the laptop he uses to run his community-building business, Skate Kids. Following his lifelong dream of becoming a teacher, the Long Beach native found a way to fuse his passion for helping children with his world-class skateboarding skills to make a living while ensuring that the next generation of skaters has it easier than he did growing up.

What started a few years ago as a one-man operation giving private skateboarding lessons and hosting the occasional skate park camp has quickly blossomed into a big deal throughout Orange County. While relocating the business from Long Beach, Colamonico landed deals with school districts and cities like Yorba Linda, Anaheim, and Costa Mesa to hold camps and demos for the areas’ children. After having to build up Skate Kids one client at a time, getting a few bigger agreements has kept Colamonico even busier than he ever was as a pro skateboarder.

“In three years, it’s grown like crazy,” Colamonico says. “You always think things are going to go faster than they are, but once they start moving, you just have to put in that work to get there. I’m just doing what I can for the kids and learning new tricks on this computer. It’s like my new skateboard.”

Although the Skate Kids-branded equipment trailer can be seen all over the county these days, Colamonico’s original goal was just to be able to maintain a job that would allow him to see his own son as much as possible. Hanging out at the skatepark seemed like the perfect activity for some father-son bonding, and it ended up giving the entrepreneurial skateboarder just the motivation he needed to inspire not only his own child, but also everyone else around him.

“My plan was just to build a business where I could spend time with my son,” Colamonico says. “I only have him half of the time, so I knew I didn’t want to be a 25 percent dad and only spend half of the time I have with him. That’s given me the spark to give my all to all of these kids. Watching these kids grow through skateboarding and building their self-confidence is what I love the most. Some of these kids come in with no balance, but I preach to them that I can do it and so can they, and then I have them rolling and shredding within a week.”

But Colamonico isn’t just teaching kids how to drop in and (much later) kickflip, he’s also looking to spread the positive life messages that he always took away from the sport. Considering that the bulk of any skateboarder’s career is spent trying, failing, and retrying new tricks in new spots, Skate Kids has become a popular tool among parents for teaching their kids lessons in perseverance, hard work, camaraderie, and keeping a positive attitude as much as it is physical exercise. For Colamonico — who often found refuge at skateparks growing up — teaching the life lessons that come through skateboarding is just as meaningful as seeing a kid finally land their first trick.

“A lot of people frowned on skateboarding when I was growing up, but skateboarding has helped me in so many ways,” Colamonico says. “I wasn’t perfect — everybody makes mistakes — but skateboarding kept me going the right direction. While some of my friends were making that full u-turn on life and going the wrong way, I would go skate. You go to the skatepark, and you’re out there giving people high-fives within five minutes. It doesn’t matter if they’re black, white, Mexican, or whatever ethnicity they are, everybody’s out there smiling together.”

Of course, Colamonico is doing as much learning as he is teaching. Aside from having to make the adjustment from athlete to coach, he’s also had to figure out the business side of things. Thankfully, the work ethic and industry connections he made while skateboarding have paid off as Skate Kids has continued to expand seemingly every month with new public contracts, private clients, and more offerings for children all over Southern California. Although he hasn’t quite mastered the art of running a small business just yet, Colamonico isn’t going to be slowing his roll anytime soon.

“Everything I’ve learned from skateboarding, I’m putting into this business,” Colamonico says. “I have so much stuff planned for these kids, but I just have to work to get there. I know that I will work to get there. It’s been tough, but it’s been fun. I’m still doing what I love, and I’m helping people get better while I can.”

Read the full article on OC Weekly.

Kurtis Colamonico was once considered one of the top professional skateboarders in the world, having spent the 2000s traveling and competing against the biggest names in the sport. But with the birth of his son, Colamonico became more interested in teaching the next generation of skatepark legends, which led to the formation of Skate Kids.

“I love skateboarding, and I love kids, and I wanted to push kids in a positive direction,” Colamonico says. “Skateboarding always kept me going in a positive direction, so I wanted to help kids use it like I did.”

As Colamonico sees it, skateboarding teaches kids such life lessons as perseverance, physical and mental toughness, and how to accept yet overcome the inevitability of failure. As with any other sport, it also helps to keep kids active and engaged in something in a world full of distractions. And Skate Kids is an opportunity for him to give back to some of his older students, so they don’t have to balance high school, working and skating, as he did.

“I recently got to employ two of the teenage kids whom I’ve taught,” Colamonico says. “Now they’re working with younger kids. That’s making two kids better at once, and now the older kids don’t have to go and work a hard job that leaves them too tired to skateboard.”

What started as an elite skateboarder giving lessons to a handful of kids has quickly caught on in Long Beach and OC. Colamonico recently hosted his first youth competition, regularly holds camps when school isn’t in session, and is looking to team up with local schools to work on an afterschool program. And many of the companies that sponsored his career are onboard to help out with his new program.

“Skateboarding can be expensive when you’re a kid growing up,” Colamonico says. “I remember not having the money for tournaments or new gear, so I wanted to make everything more accessible to kids, no matter how much money they have. I wish there was something like this when I was a kid.”

Read the full article on OC Weekly.