THE DIFFERENCE ONE CAN MAKE

The entire premise of my blog is to remind people that each one of us matters. That each one of us has the power to make a difference.  This blog is usually reserved for my more spiritual side, not my working girl side.  But this story is too big, too cool to not let it be here.  It belongs here.  

The past few weeks I have seen something amazing come together all because of the work of one person.  

I love my job.  I love that I work with awesome teachers and staff who continually amaze me with their efforts, their compassion and their hard work.  I love the kids I work with. They are funny, smart, caring people.  During the past month of the Colorado floods I have seen story after story of hard work, kindness and giving.   This story is one of those that make you smile, choke back a tear or two, and make you stand a little taller for being a little part of it all.  

A few weeks ago, Alex, a junior  at Silver Creek High School came to see me.  He wanted to do something to help people who had been affected by the flooding.  He told me he wanted to get VANS to donate shoes, hoodies, t-shirts and hats to flood victims.  These kids, he said, needed to have some cool stuff, not just generic t-shirts from Walmart, or someone's leftover shoes.  He had a fire in his belly and I loved seeing that.  

This young man is no longer part of my leadership program.  He is a very talented musician, part of our school's incredible Drumline, marching band and very active in many music classes at SCHS.  He felt his schedule could not allow him to stay in SCLA.  I get that.  Sometimes there is just not enough hours in the day to do all we want to do.  I am proud of kids who sort out their priorities and figure out how they are going to be as successful as they can in high school.  Even if I lose them out of my program I am still a huge advocate for them. I was thrilled that he came to talk to me and asked me to assist him how I could with his idea.   

So here we go, a high school kid that loves music, likes wearing VANS stuff, and wants to help kids affected by the flood.  Alex starts making phone calls, starts sending emails and the cool thing is that VANS says yes.  Alex connects with Shawn Gruenhagen, the Sales Rep for Vans in Colorado.  He tells Alex VANS loves this idea, and they would love to come to Longmont and give some stuff away. 

It took us a little bit of time to sort out a location, date and time.  Alex went all over Longmont and Lyons talking to leaders in the community, juggling school and band competitions. Alex got the folks at LifeBridge Church to offer their parking lot to host the event.   Alex kept pushing when others might have quit when things didn't go quite the way he would have liked it.  He stayed positive, and stayed focused.  He was going to get cool VANS stuff to the people who lost a lot, no matter what it took.   

So the day arrives....Of course, it snows the morning of the giveaway. 

This event would be held in a parking lot.... outdoors.  ugh..

But the sun came out, like it does in Colorado. The snow melts by lunchtime, like it does in Colorado. Shawn pulls up with a trailer full of boxes.  We show up with two classes of SCLA students.  Tents go up, a trailer is unloaded and boxes are unloaded and sorted.  

Shawn was amazed that we had a crew of 60 students arrive.  We had 12 parents drive to get us there.  Our teachers juggled their class plans to make sure our leadership students would be there to help, and to give our students another real life experience making a difference in the community, and not just talking about it in the classroom.  Another very cool part of what we do in SCLA. 

Vans had donated thousands and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.  

I was worried that not enough people would come.   I was not sure that the word got to all the right people.  There was soooo much stuff.  

Alex was organizing everything and everyone.  He was awesome.  

The event was scheduled from 4-6pm.  At 3pm people started lining up.  More volunteers came to help.  The head secretary from Silver Creek, a flood victim herself, came to help.  

 Girls from a rival high school's basketball team came to volunteer.  None of that stuff mattered, it was all about helping the people in our community.  That community, knows no school colors, or team mascots.   

We are Longmont strong. 

 We are Lyons strong. 

We are Frederick strong. 

We are Jamestown strong.  

We are Boulder strong.  

We are COLORADO STRONG. 

Mormon Missionaries came to volunteer. 

By the time 4pm rolled around the line was long and people were waiting to pick out some great items all for free from VANS.  Shawn welcomed everyone and let them know how the distribution would  work.  People would all get to take five or six items each.  

Hundreds of people came.  Hundreds of people to thousands of items home for free.  Some people, after standing in line for a really long time, wanted to meet Alex.  They wanted to give him a hug.  

He looked at his mom and said, "I hate hugs!"  

She laughed and said, "Lots of people here want to give you one."  

Alex disappeared back into the tent to get back to work.  Back to help people find the shirt they wanted, get a hoodie or choose a backpack.  He didn't need to be in front, in charge and taking credit.  He was in the trenches, working.  

Leading by example.  

At 6pm the last few people got to take a few more shirts.  The backpacks, the shoes, the hoodies were gone.  Everything was gone.  The small group of people wrapped up by cleaning it all up.  

There was the unlikely group of people, who came together because of one young man who wanted to do something cool for flood victims.  

He wanted people who had lost so much to know we were still thinking of them.  

To all the kids at Lyons High School who are still going to school in an old building in Longmont, Alex is still thinking of you.  

 To the people who are still sleeping on their grandma's couch, Alex is still thinking of you. 

To those of you who are living in a hotel room, Alex is still thinking of you. 

And to those of you who are wondering how you are going to rebuild your lives because your houses are completely gone, Alex is still thinking of you. 

And because of Alex, the rest of us are still thinking of you too.  

Just think, a kid who loves playing the drums in Longmont, Colorado decided to do something to help others.  He reached out to those who could help him make his dream come true.  He found an awesome company that wasn't afraid to  say  "Yes" to a great idea. 

 He has incredible parents who didn't tell him it was too big, or too hard or would take too much time.  I am glad he reached out to me because I like to say "yes" as much as I can too.  

Volunteers from all around the community joined in.  

If this is not a wonderful example of the ability of ONE RANDOM PERSON to make a difference, I don't know what is.  

So, dream big.  Don't be afraid to try. 

You may have plenty of people who will say no, but there is someone who will say yes. 

Because we all can make a difference, one random person at a time. 

For more pictures and info check out #VansFloodRelief on Twitter and Instagram 

When flood waters rise, so do we.

I'm not going to lie.

I have not written in a long time.  I sometimes see the outdated blog staring at me almost taunting me to write.  I decided to take a break and get refocused.  Life has thrown me a couple of curveballs in the past few months, and I needed some time to figure it all out.  But all of that is for another day.


Most of you know I am a Colorado gal.  I have lived here since I was three years old and my dad moved us from Lexington Kentucky to Boulder with IBM.  I'm not a native, but I am darn close.

I love Colorado.  It is an amazing state.  I love Longmont.  It is a great city.   In fact, it is such a great city we were voted the 2nd happiest city behind Napa California due to our overabundance of happy Tweets.  And if we can outtweet the wine capital of the world, we must be happy.

 Longmont Times- Call Tweet This

Recently we were not so happy.  The weather freaked out on us and dumped rain until floods ran rampant over our amazing state.  Over 7000 people were displaced.   It was an insane experience that seemed surreal,  as if you were walking on a movie set- but not my hometown.

Photo by Payton Peterson

We got rocked.  We had churches, schools and civic buildings set up as shelters for all the displaced people.   The National Guard was called in and had to airlift out many people living in mountain communities, after they had been stranded for days.  People died in the flood waters.

I rolled over Thursday morning, September 12th 2013 to get ready for work.  I glanced at my phone.   There was an email that school was cancelled due to pending flooding.  After my initial glee of a day off, I started to worry.  I pulled my sweat pants on and headed to my laptop.  I began to scour the internet for information.  I had the TV on with the news.  By sundown things were getting really really bad.  I didn't know what to do.  I read the tweets from people wondering what was going on.  I saw the concerned facebook posts.  I knew the one thing I could do was to keep people up to date.  I could stay online and share information.  I could tweet, I could facebook, and I could email.  And I did.  Suddenly social media had a real, important purpose. There were no political rants posted. There were no horrible bathroom "selfies" on twitter.  Information was flying around Longmont, and I felt grateful to help, in some little way.


What happened next I suppose happens in a lot of places where there is a tragedy, but I think in Longmont,  in the 2nd happiest twitter place, we did it really, really well.   The people came together. Longmont went to work.  Longmont rolled up it's sleeves, pulled on it's boots, grabbed a shovel and their neighbor and went to work.   People could get back into their houses to work.  The National Guard tried to keep the volunteers out of the areas, but that didn't work too well.  School was cancelled for a week.  I hoped my leadership students would not waste the time, but help.  Boy, was I impressed. They helped. They were amazing.  EVERYONE was amazing.   We gathered at my house and made hundreds of sack lunches to deliver to the volunteers who were cleaning out basements and working so hard to help.

We collected tools and cleaning supplies to help those in need.  People donated hundreds of dollars of worth of items.  

A friend collected items from BYU and her Utah friends and drove it all over to Colorado to help.  

A friend and her family gathered items and mailed them from California 

We gathered a group of people from the LDS church, the Silver Creek Leadership Academy and many amazing local folks and made 1600 sack lunches in an event called 

FLOOD LONGMONT WITH FOOD 

And then we delivered the lunches. 

My students were amazing.  They worked hard and were featured in a newspaper article.

http://www.timescall.com/news/colorado-flood/ci_24143449/st-vrain-students-take-advantage-school-closures-by

Then, one of the kindest acts of thanks I have ever been given, I was thanked for stepping up to help in an article in the Longmont Times Call.


http://www.timescall.com/lifestyles-top-stories/ci_24136302/when-their-community-needed-them-most-these-people

So out of the mud, the smell, the damage came this amazing thing.  We stopped whining about things that we disagree on and we helped each other.  It reminded me of the United States right after 9/11.  We stopped finding fault with each other for a little while and were proud to be Americans.  In Longmont, I saw people from very different faiths working together in someone's basement and yard.   I saw kids with "Longmont Trojans" and "Silver Creek Raptors" T-shirts on working side by side and enjoying each other.  People stopped what they were doing and donated what they had for those who had nothing.  A member of the Red Cross was quoted as saying they had never seen a town come together like Longmont.  Maybe they were surprised, but I wasn't.

I know the people here.
They are my friends.
They are my co-workers.
They are the teenagers working part-time who push my cart to the car from King Soopers.
They are the the ladies at the Post Office in the Ace Hardware that know my son is on a mission in California.
They are my kid's teachers and coaches.
They are the policemen and firemen.
They are my friends who are elected officials, and newspaper reporters.
They are my friends from the Longmont Chamber of Commerce, small business owners who gave away all kinds of items to help.
They are retired people who volunteer all around the city.
They are Pastors and Priests and Rabbis and Bishops.
They are football players, soccer players, cheerleaders and bandies.
They are all the amazing people who make Longmont what it is.

On the night of September 12th 2013 We forgot all that divides us and thought of only one thing.  

How can I help? 

And that, was a beautiful thing......

Seeing us truly, make a difference, one random woman (person) at a time......