LI native biking for fallen soldiers' kin

Sachem High School graduate Kevin Mincio has a debt to pay and is bicycling 4,200 miles to do it.

Army veteran Mincio, 40, who served for a year in Iraq, started pedaling June 9 in California bound for New York, to raise money for families of fallen soldiers.

"We're paying back a debt to families who are suffering for having a hero to provide us freedom in this country," said Mincio. "It's somewhat of a duty or an obligation to say thank you."

The funds are being raised through the Team Jesse Foundation, a nonprofit Mincio co-founded in 2007 and named for his friend, Staff Sgt. Jesse Williams, 25, of Santa Rosa, Calif., who died in combat in Iraq that year.

According to Mincio, before leaving for his second tour of duty in Iraq, Williams asked him to look after his then 11-month-old daughter, Amaya, if he didn't make it back. After Williams' death on April 8, 2007, Mincio raised money through a lacrosse team to put aside in a trust for Amaya, now 5.

In the fall of 2010, Mincio, who said he was honorably discharged from the Army that year, wanted to help other families and began planning the bike trip. He and Matt Sauri, the director of special projects for Team Jesse, are riding 60 to 120 miles, up to nine hours, per day.

The two, who hope to raise $500,000, started biking on what would have been Williams' 30th birthday, leaving from his grave in Santa Rosa, Calif. So far they've raised $60,000, Mincio said.

The men are scheduled to end the trip at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11. Along the way, Mincio said he and Sauri are visiting patriotic sites and plan to visit military families in the towns they pass through. They rode into Pueblo, Colo., for the July 4 Independence Day celebrations.

The money they raise will be distributed through the Travis Manion Foundation, which assists wounded and disabled veterans and their families, said Mincio, who grew up in Holbrook and now lives in Mercer Island, Wash.

"Every dollar that we raise is going to families," he said by phone from Fowler, Colo., earlier this week. "We use our mission to motivate ourselves."

Information about the ride can be found at teamjesse.org.