Modesto teen teams with sorority to deliver coats to kids

Coats, jackets and sweatshirts lost at area schools are finding appreciative new owners thanks to Omega Nu and a Gregori High School freshman.

For the cold-weather season now upon us, the sisters of the philanthropic sorority collected, washed and mended 1,898 garments abandoned in various schools’ lost-and-found bins.

“We reached out to Modesto City Schools and Ceres Unifed” to select schools at which the outerwear would be distributed to students in need, said Omega Nu member Michele Laverty, director of the Modesto-based National Ag Science Center. The chosen schools were Walter White Elementary in Ceres, where a giveaway was held Thursday, and Fairview Elementary in Modesto, where kids will receive coats Tuesday.

“We packaged them up in boxes based on gender and size and split them down the middle” between the two schools, Laverty said.

It should come as no surprise to parents of little boys that there were more boys’ coats than girls’ left in lost-and-founds.

A key player in the coat drive is Gregori freshman Emma Baily, who got the ball rolling last year when she was an eighth-grader at Prescott Junior High School.

In May last year, a massive tornado hit Moore, Okla., killing 24 people – including nine children – and causing an estimated $2 billion in property damage. Bailey wanted to do something to help the battered community, so she began collecting coats and jackets from lost-and-founds at schools in the Stanislaus Union School District, including Prescott Junior High and Agnes Baptist, Stanislaus and Mary Lou Dieterich elementary schools.

“I was at my sister’s school, Agnes Baptist, and they had trash cans full of jackets … so we washed them and boxed them up,” she said. All together last year, Bailey collected about 450 coats. But when she and her helpers went to ship them, they learned just how expensive it is and that donations of goods no longer were being sought for Moore, only monetary donations.

“My mom is in Omega Nu,” Bailey said, and last year was at a meeting where a clothing drive was being planned.

Supply, meet demand.

Bailey enjoyed working with Omega Nu to distribute that initial collection of coats, so she has worked with the sorority again this year, reaching out to a greater number of schools.

Did she do the work as part of a Girl Scouts project or for school-required community service hours? No, said Bailey, who has volunteered with Omega Nu on other projects and worked with the Society for Disabilities. “I just like helping the community.”

This story was originally published November 23, 2014 at 9:10 AM with the headline "Modesto teen teams with sorority to deliver coats to kids."