Swanton girl opens heart with gift of doll

By DAVID J. COEHRS

Enterprise Staff Writer

Sometimes, the biggest hearts come in the smallest packages, and express themselves most powerfully by the simplest deeds.

For six-year-old Trinity Keefer of Swanton, that meant giving up a beloved old friend to make a complete stranger's life a little happier.

As her mother, Emily Keefer will attest, it wasn't exactly Trinity's easiest decision. But her daughter knew it was the right one.

"She's a selfless little girl when it comes to helping out," Keefer said.

Trinity's story began and ended with a simple baby doll she was given at age 18 months. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, it was cherished and loved until it became well-worn and soiled with time. So much so, that it wouldn't become clean after repeated attempts.

"That doll had gotten to the point where it was dirty and you couldn't wash it anymore. I was trying to get rid of it, and she wouldn't let me," Keefer said.

She found a solution when the Swanton Rotary Club and school district jointly held a clothing drive for less fortunate families in Honduras. Within two weeks, about 2,500 pounds of clothes were collected and scheduled for delivery by five members of the Rotary Club. They prepared a trip to Central America from Jan. 29 to Feb. 4.

The clothing drive was in association with the Rotarians' Honduras Project, a two-year effort with the Usula Rotary Club in the country's city of San Pedro Sula to remodel a community center into a kindergarten for the depressed La Pradera neighborhood.

And Keefer suggested that Trinity's beloved doll be included in the family's donations of clothes and shoes.

At first her daughter, a Crestwood Elementary School first grader who has donated toys to charitable causes in the past, was reluctant. But Trinity had received a new baby doll for Christmas, so it didn't take much convincing. Even so, she was determined to see that her baby was adopted into a good home.

"This is my favorite baby But I want to Donate it," she wrote in a letter accompanying it. "I was just trying to Be nice But I love my Baby so take good care of her."

Keefer said Trinity was comforted, and even excited, to know the doll would be given to a child more in need than herself. Still, she wrote the note "because she wanted them to know how much she cared about the doll."

Enter Fr. Daniel Zak, Swanton Rotary Club president. While distributing some of the clothing at Paroquia Nuestra Senor de Misericonrida - or Parish of Our Lord of Mercy - on the final day of the trip, he came upon three-year-old Blanca Luz Garcia and her mother. With Blanca's big brown eyes and angelic face, Fr. Zak knew he'd found the perfect adoptive mother for Trinity's baby doll.

"I had the doll, and she was just looking at me with her big eyes, smiling. It was really a touching kind of scene," he said. "She was very appreciative. You'd think we had given her a million dollars."

Most of the children in line for clothing did not even have shoes, Fr. Zak said. "I wish I'd had 25 (dolls). I'd have given them all. It was heart-rendering. It was a beautiful thing to see."

The circumstances surrounding the doll's donation made it all the more special, he added.

A photo of Blanca and her mother taken by Rotarian Don Kennedy was presented to Trinity this week by fellow Rotarian Sean McGhee.

"Would you ever expect a first grader to donate something like that with a hand-written note?" he asked.

Keefer said her husband, Lewis, a soldier stationed in Iraq who adopted Trinity just before Christmas, is very proud of her generosity.

"She's a giving little girl," she said.