Jefferson Awards

• Mar 26, 2008 8:01 pm US/Pacific
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  Caring Hands Stitch Comfort for Babies

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Caring Hands Stitch Comfort for Babies

Jefferson Award Winner: Molly Renalds

Reporting
Barbara Rodgers

Everyone who knows Molly Renalds agrees she is one of the sweetest, most giving people they've ever met. At the Valley Oak Respite Center in Danville, where Molly has been a volunteer for seven years, she is a favorite with the frail seniors who have Alzheimer's and other disabilities.

"Oh my gosh, Molly is a joy to us all and they love having her," says Valley Oak's Program Director Carmen McCarthy. "She sings with them, she serves them their coffee and their muffins and they love her. I love her."

And this is just one of Molly's volunteer sites. At the age of 84, she is still helping out at a soup kitchen, at a food donation center, taking communion to hospitalized church members and writing notes of encouragement to family, friends, and strangers.

But the act of kindness for which Molly is best known is her Blanket Buddies.

"When we distribute the blankets every September, Officer Creel comes and gets the blankets for the Highway Patrol. They have two in every car," Molly explains.

The children's blankets and quilts are made by a whole group of knitters and sewers Molly began recruiting years ago.

Molly says, "About 25 years ago we had a women's club in San Jose and a nurse came and told us that these new mothers were taking their babies home wrapped in paper towels, so I started sewing and that's when I started making baby blankets. "

At first, Molly stitched all the blankets herself, but years later, she officially began Blanket Buddies.

Since Molly organized her Blanket Buddies back in 1997, they have knitted and stitched more than 1600 blankets to comfort babies from Danville to Watsonville.

"We give to the Highway Patrol and they give to the battered women's shelter," Molly says. "We give to the fire department and we give to the crisis nursery and Casa Vicente and Casa Francisco and the farm workers. Without these blankets, our method of comforting small children is a plastic, institutional blanket that is yucko."

"Molly, thank you for making that call to me 11 years ago and getting us involved in that program," adds CHP Officer Steve Creel.

And Molly has done all this giving and volunteering while being a wife to her late husband of 47 years and a mother to eight children of her own.

"Well I just think I'm so lucky to be able to do this," shy says. "You don't do these things for credit. You do them out of love for people. "

For spreading that love so widely, bringing joy and comfort to so many, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Molly Renalds.

For more information on Blanket Buddies, call St. Joan of Arc Church in San Ramon at 925-830-0600.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)