Kellie Montalvo wasn’t sure about this activist thing.
Montalvo’s 21-year-old son, Benjamin, was fatally struck by a texting, hit-and-run driver just before midnight on June 11, 2020, as he bicycled with friends on Rimpau Avenue in Corona. The impact catapulted him off the windshield and over the car.
There are two lanes in each direction on that section of Rimpau near Centennial High, with a portion of the right lanes marked for bicyclists, though they are not dedicated bike lanes.
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“I can’t die until they fix Rimpau Avenue,” Montalvo decided.
But the Corona resident and retired McKinley Elementary School teacher who last oversaw 32 third-graders, said, “I get nervous in the bigger speaking engagements we’ve done.”
And pestering city officials for change?
“I don’t know how to talk to these people,” she said. “Engineering, traffic, blah, blah, blah.”
And when the founder of the safety organization Streets are for Everyone suggested she create an Inland Empire chapter of SAFE, Montalvo thought to herself: “You’re ridiculous.”
“This is a whole world we knew nothing about,” Montalvo admitted.
But motivated by her grief and fury, Montalvo, 62, has overcome those doubts to become a fierce and persistent advocate for making roads safer for bicyclists and pedestrians.
“I think it stems from not wanting to let his story end,” Montalvo said during an interview alongside her husband, Eddie Montalvo, 71. “That when we go and do a little something, it makes the pain a little bit lighter. It’s very difficult to share the story, but when we leave, besides having had a stomachache and being exhausted, there’s just a little bit of lightness, and I always go.”
Eddie Montalvo, a semi-retired real estate agent, jokingly refers to himself as his wife’s “sidekick,” but he’s much more.
“When we go and do an event, I’m there also, and I get to speak, I get to cry because, you know, I cry,” he said.
Kellie Montalvo eventually did establish the Inland Empire chapter of Streets are for Everyone, which attempts to reduce injuries for bicyclists and pedestrians through education and legislation, and advocates for tougher penalties for impaired and distracted drivers and more rights for victims.
They filmed public-service announcements and held a news conference for the state Office of Traffic Safety in 2024 during Distracted Driving Awareness Month. There have been speeches at Every 15 Minutes simulated fatal traffic collisions at high schools; they have spoken for the OTS’ Slow Down, Move Over and Super Bowl anti-DUI campaigns and presented their story for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Kellie Montalvo spoke at ceremonies for a pedestrian who was fatally struck by a car in Highland and, for girls ages 3 and 4 who died in a suspected DUI crash in Rialto. She also participated in the World Day of Remembrance event in Corona for traffic collision victims.
And now she is working with lawmakers on legislation to toughen punishments for impaired and distracted drivers such as the one who killed Benjamin.
Montalvo drew the line on one proposed engagement, however: Explaining the impact of crime on victims to inmates at the California Institution for Women in Chino, where Benjamin’s killer, Neomi Renee Velado, has been lodged.
“I’m too angry,” Montalvo said. “I think they’d better find someone better than me, because if she’s in that panel …”
Velado, 28, was scheduled to be released by Saturday, Feb. 14, after serving less than three years of a nine-year sentence following convictions for vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and hit-and-run causing injury or death.
“This came as a gut punch,” Kellie Montalvo said.
ODE TO A FRIEND
Benjamin’s three brothers, all older, convinced him at an impressionable age that his name was actually Bean Dip Montalvo, and the nickname stuck.
The Montalvos learned after Benjamin’s death that when they chased him off his phone late at night, he was sometimes counseling friends going through difficult times. He had attained another nickname, “The Dr. Phil of Raney Intermediate.”
A young man told Kellie Montalvo that when, for whatever reason, he was ostracized at school, Benjamin made sure he never had to eat lunch alone again.
A homeless classmate who Benjamin had befriended was moved to author a poem upon his death, “To Your Killer,” that reads in part:
“If only you had the slightest clue
of who
who he was to me.
My safe place,
my biggest inspiration.
Maybe then
you’d have remorse for your actions.”
Benjamin played football and baseball, went skydiving and loved to snowboard. He joined the “Old Ladies Book Club” when he worked at Target. The walls of his bedroom feature posters, his jerseys and photos of him, some added after he was killed.
“Knowing what he could have done on this planet, the light that he would have brought, we have to carry that forward, because there’s so much pain and anger surrounding this,” his mother said.
‘VERY PERSISTENT’
Montalvo has channeled that light by speaking at Corona City Council meetings, lobbying police and city planning officials and joining city committees.
Montalvo said she spent $5,000 to commission a traffic study for Rimpau. The Inland SAFE chapter — she is president — raised $9,500 for electronic speed signs that were placed on that street.
“What this tends to be is learning how to be that voice that is the squeaky wheel, but still balancing it with not getting everybody to hate you too much, so that you can work hand in hand, and we have good relationships now,” Montalvo said.
Assistant City Manager Justin Tucker said he has worked closely with Montalvo
“She’s very persistent,” he said. “That’s kind of Kellie’s M.O. She contacted the city multiple times, the police, she worked with Public Works, she was emailing them all the time. She met with our traffic engineers. In the beginning, it would be very routine that there would be an email from Kellie.”
Tucker is a bicyclist; he said he once rode 4,000 miles in a year, the equivalent of 1,454 loops around the circular, 2.75-mile Grand Boulevard that gave the town its nickname, The Circle City.
Of Rimpau Avenue, Tucker said, “Frankly, I avoid it.”
Montalvo proposed widening Rimpau by moving the sidewalks or removing trees, Tucker said, but for various reasons, such changes cannot be made.
So Tucker directed Montalvo’s passion to the bicycle-lane working group, and the trails master plan committee. City officials also connected her with other families who had lost loved ones to bicycle crashes.
Montalvo’s support was important when the city proposed reducing a portion of Sixth Street, which runs the length of the city, to one lane from two in both directions and adding curbside parking and bicycle lanes.
“She didn’t put her thumb on the scale,” Tucker said, “but when we were getting criticism for doing it, she stood up and said, ‘No, it’s real valuable.’ She was so excited. … She organized a group of people (supporters of the changes) to bike Sixth Street.
“I do think she’s had a meaningful impact on bike safety and bike awareness,” Tucker added.
ACQUIRING COURAGE
The Montalvos’ activism began slowly, as they were instructed not to speak publicly about the case during the trial.
But after Velado was sentenced in 2023, Mothers Against Drunk Driving recruited Kellie Montalvo to speak, as did schools hosting the graphic Every 15 Minutes demonstrations.
In those demonstrations, which simulate bloody, fatal traffic collisions, high school students pose as victims.
“It’s 800 people in the (school) auditorium,” she said. ” And that felt a little bit intimidating, but then the line of kids afterwards that were crying, they made a line to hug us and say, ‘Thank you for being here. I’m gonna remember being dead forever.’ That then gave us the courage to do the next one. And then the next one.”
Her husband speaks to the crowds as well.
“He’s the workhorse,” Kellie Montalvo said. “I can sit in front of the computer, which he hates. I can speak, which he’s very good at. He just doesn’t know it. He reaches a lot of people with a whole different perspective and speaks Spanish fluently.
“And then when we do the schools, reaching the young males is really important. Most of these crashes are young males dying and young males driving.”
Initially, she was “nervous” about uttering Velado’s name.
“I got over that real quick,” Montalvo said. “I give her full name, Neomi Renee Velado, and I even say she has blood on her hands, and she always will.”
In October 2025 in Highland, Montalvo spoke after helping lay a so-called ghost tire at the site where pedestrian Mark Rosales was fatally struck as he crossed Pacific Street. Mourners wrote sentiments on the white-painted tire.
The Montalvos own a ghost bicycle inscribed by friends and family members to honor Benjamin.
“From one grieving mother to another, it never gets easier,” she told the crowd.
Montalvo also said she collaborated with Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris on legislation introduced this month that would require first-time DUI offenders to install breathalyzer ignition locks and lengthen some driver’s license suspensions and revocations.
Eddie Montalvo said he takes pride in their outreach.
“We save their lives. They save other people. And it’s kind of inspiring, you know?”
But both acknowledge they are tired.
“It is draining,” Kellie Montalvo said before listing several events they still planned to attend in the near future.
“Maybe I will have to take a breather from it after Feb. 15th,” she said. “Maybe I will have to go away for a while. But then, what are my choices?”
