This is another of our “SURPRISE!” columns. So SURPRISE! Carol Harding, you are a Neighbourhood Hero.

Linda Lukavina says that Carol is bright, spunky, wonderful, funny and patient and she’s never sour or disgruntled. In short, she’s an ideal grandparent role model.

Linda is a Grade 3 teacher at Georgia Avenue Community School so, given that description, it’s no wonder she loves having Carol as a volunteer in her classroom.

Three years ago Carol met Caroline Isles, the Community School Coordinator at Georgia Avenue and the next thing she knew, she was volunteering in Linda’s class as a BEARS (Be Enthusiastic About Reading Success) volunteer.

“Carol loves reading herself,” Linda told me, “and given her library services background, she’s especially good with children and I really appreciate the information she gleans about each student she works with. She gives me excellent feedback on each one.”

When Carol first arrived in Linda’s class, she volunteered one hour a week and worked with two students for half an hour each. Soon however that hour grew into a full morning and more and more students benefited from her enthusiasm, energy and support.

In her second year Carol and Linda were chatting about all the skills they had been taught as children, skills like knitting, sewing, crocheting, caning and gardening, skills that, in most cases, are not being passed on to today’s young people.

Soon Carol’s quilting skills were introduced to Linda’s students.

That year the class made a nine-patch quilt. This required students to learn simple stitching and some basic math as the quilt was set out on a grid. Every student participated including the boys.

“The boys loved it,” Linda enthused.

Last year the students each made a pillow and once again the boys were front and centre. Every student also received a special Christmas stocking from Carol filled with small presents and, for the second year in a row, carol gave Linda a pillow with all of her students names sewed on strips of material prepared by the students and sewn together by Carol.

This year Carol has continued as a BEARS volunteer but she has had to delay her quilting lessons until the new year because she has been helping her husband recover from hip surgery but Linda’s students know that she will be back in the quilting saddle come January.

As regular readers of this column know, I don’t write these stories to make heroes of the Neighbourhood Heroes I write about. My goal is to focus on the positive things people are doing in our community and by telling their stories, hope that some readers may be motivated to take similar action in their own lives. In other words I write about ordinary people doing simple things that any other ordinary person could do, things that have made a difference in their own life or the lives of others around them.

So what is it that Carol Harding does for herself? She does Tai Chi, she swims and in general keeps fit and thus keeps her energy level high enough to do all the other things she loves to do, including working with kids.

I hope you enjoyed your surprise Carol and that you have an especially good day.

By the way, you don’t have to have any special training to work as a BEARS or BEAMS (Be Enthusiastic About Math Success) volunteer. If reading and math don’t excite you, perhaps you might have other skills to pass on to today’s students. Contact your local school principal for more information.

Next week our Neighbourhood Heroes spotlight will once again shine on Nanaimo’s youth.