Submitted by a thankful parent--

On opening day I worked with two Ruckel Middle School students during my volunteer time. I was talking to one of them (Matt I think was his name) and assumed he had a sibling playing on a team and was asking him about that for something to talk about. I was pleasantly surprised when this boy told me that no, no one in his family currently played on Little League, but that a friend of his had a brother who played on the Indians Major team and she had rounded up several of her friends to volunteer for opening day. I assumed they did this for community service hours they needed to graduate, but he told me they can't actually count the hours required for graduation until they are in High School. He was telling me how most of their friends (nine in all) were honor students and all on yearbook staff together and like doing service projects (he also mentioned how they are currently sending care packages to 250 soldiers serving on a carrier and have been once a month since December). He later introduced me to his friend who apparently was responsible for getting all the extra help. Her name was Erica Daniel.

All of these kids deserve thanks for giving up their day to help out. But I especially think that Erica deserves a thank-you for getting together this extra help. From what I understand most of the nine students she pulled together volunteered all day from about 8-5. I know that when I worked serving with Erica and Matt, they were very hard workers and extremely polite and respectful. I thought it was great that some of our local teens were willing to give up their day to help out and do some good for really no gain. I asked them why they wanted to do it and they said they thought it would be fun and also figured that this way more parents could spend the day with their children. I think it is great that we have many responsible teens in our community who are willing to work hard and do good deeds for others. I really think this was a great thing since it was a teen, the sister of a little league player who took this initiative. Think how great it would be if our parents could get friends with no children playing to come volunteer their time to make this organization better! I know often we can discourage some of our younger teens from volunteering because we think they might not be responsible enough, but I would say Matt and Erica proved otherwise and volunteered with an attitude many more of out adults need to have! I think Erica, Matt and their friends definitely qualify for a "Random Act of Kindness".