January 19, 2008 St. Joseph ’s Church
Thanks to St. Joseph’s Church and its St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Clothes Closet had its largest and most successful “Share Your Clothes Day” ever. Almost 700 people showed up to “shop”. Add to that the families and friends for whom they shopped as well as the volunteers who found clothes for others, and we probably served over 2,000 people.
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It began with volunteers like Ana Higareda sorting donations that almost overwhelmed us this holiday season. Ana is our sorter extraordinaire who, in a three day period, reduced a mountain of clothes to a mole hill.
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Our perennial heroes are the “troops” from E.G.A.C.T. who loaded all of the donated clothing into our vehicles to transport it to the church.
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Saturday morning, our customers began arriving at 4 a.m. The first one there started a sign-in list. When staff and volunteers arrived at 5:30 a.m., there wrer 23 names on the list and they were able to plug in the coffee pot and began passing out tickets. St Joseph’s Social Hall lobby was greatly appreciated as a warm refuge from the pre-dawn cold. |
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| Since by 6:30 a.m. there were 150 people ready and ticketed, the doors opened early for shopping. They found lots of warm clothes. The St. Vincent de Paul Society had saved boxes and boxes of nice winter clothes that had not sold at Granny’s Attic in July. |
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To avoid crowding, shoppers were admitted at 4 different times. The tables were restocked between sessions. Nobody objected to waiting as each had a warm drink and a place to relax. Several oaf the shoppers stayed all day to help restock and clean up. |
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Even after filling the hall 4 times, there was very little left over. The 20 bags of leftovers will go to the Sacramento Association for the Retarded’s Thrift Town. |
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| These children illustrates our hope for the future. They are readers but notice that one boy is hugging his baseball bat. |
