Exclusive | I scour Manhattans trash for junk like broken $1K strollers and $20 coffee grinders then fix and give them away for free

One man’s trash really is another man’s treasure.Darrick Lo’s neighbors throw out everything from broken strollers to coffee grinders to chairs.

He’s the guy who digs through their trash and fixes it all himself.Growing up in New Jersey, Lo liked to watch his mother sew on her Singer Stylist 534, circa 1975.One day, it stopped working. “It needed its hook and feed gears replaced because the original parts were made of materials that degrade over time,” Lo told The Post.

Once he found the service manual, he repaired it.Lo went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cornell University in mechanical and biomedical engineering.Now, finding joy in the forensic work of figuring out what’s wrong and correcting it, he solicits broken toys, gadgets and appliances from his Manhattan neighbors — things that would otherwise be thrown away — so he can repair them and teach himself as he goes.Most items come from Craigslist or his local Facebook Buy Nothing group.

He admits to taking things off the street on recycling night.It’s not a repair service, he said, because he doesn’t want the pressure or logistics of fixing things on a timeline.“I view these items as machines that follow the basic laws of physics,” said Lo, whose day job is at a medical-device company.“The core engineering principle that was instilled in me is to break down complex systems into their simplest forms.

Failure can be caused by one specific thing, but it is usually a multitude of things and is not very obvious.”As a high-schooler, Lo had a part-time job at an electronics store.After college, he took his motorcycle apart and reassembled it. “I have done house calls for friends to repair washers, dryers, refrigerators, ovens, water heaters and furnaces,” he told The Post.Lo recently found himself with two broken UPPAbaby strollers.

They were “structurally compromised,” he said.“They have complex features and brake mechanics.

The body construction is...