Ron Wolf broke every bone in his face and suffered a brain injury when he crashed his motorcycle into a rock wall along a hairpin turn in Kaneohe about six years ago.

He recovered, but because of a recent seizure related to his injuries, he can’t drive an ambulance for his job as a city paramedic.

"I have a scar from ear to ear," he said. "They basically peeled my face off to rebuild and do restructural work."

He said his family also suffered through his five-week recovery at the hospital.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet because he was "overly confident" in his riding abilities, and he hopes young people will avoid his mistake by donning a helmet when riding any two-wheeled vehicle.

"It’s not ‘if it’s going to happen,’ it’s ‘when it’s going to happen.’ And when it happens … it’s too late," he said. "I would do anything to change what happened. It’s like a bad nightmare. It’s like waking up one morning and your arms are cut off. It’s taken so much away from me, the things that are important in my life."

To save lives and reduce traumatic crashes such as Wolf’s, the Queen’s Medical Center on Monday will give away 150 helmets through a federally funded program to promote helmet use. The helmets will be distributed during two free hour-long presentations at 4 and 5:30 p.m. The sessions are intended for students, but open to the public. They will be in room A-102 at the University of Hawaii’s Schidler College of Business.

Greg Suares, an emergency room physician at Queen’s who is working with the program, said he wanted to raise awareness among young people because he’s sees a lot of them coming in with mo-ped injuries, some of those injuries life-altering.

"Their opportunities to do things, to be who they could have been, are just completely gone," he said. "They can’t feed themselves. They can no longer walk."

He said besides increasing awareness, another goal of the program is to remove barriers to helmet use, such as the cost of protective gear.

Experts point out that unhelmeted injuries also take a toll on the community. In Hawaii, the rate of deaths among riders without helmets is 200 percent higher than that of helmeted riders, according to Queen’s. Over a five-year period last decade, taxpayers paid about $1.9 million a year for the hospital expenses of motorcyclists with head injuries who were covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

Hawaii has a partial helmet law, which requires motorcycle riders under age 18 to wear a helmet.

Mo-peds are in the same class as bicycles, which means those 15 and under are required to wear helmets.

Cora Speck, coordinator of injury prevention and research at Queen’s, said because of a perceived resistance to the adoption of a full helmet law, health care officials hope to increase the voluntary use of helmets.

She said the helmets will be given to the first 75 participants of the two presentations on Monday who also complete a survey and show proof of ridership, such as a motorcycle drivers license or permit or mo-ped registration. She said a variety of stylish and Department of Transportation-approved helmets are available from Montgomery Motorsports. Parking is limited and costs $5.