Smith: For charity founder, check more proof of God’s work

Volunteers at a crisis-tested thrift shop in Santa Rosa see a nexus of their prayers and the check that arrived the other day in the mail.

“God is faithful,” said Elaine-Barbara Neiswender, founder of Love Your Neighbor Public Charity. The surprise check, for $10,000, came as a grant from the California Municipal Finance Authority.

The timing could scarcely have been better. Love Your Neighbor, whose volunteers use store proceeds to provide healthful food, home-medical equipment and other essentials to locals in dire need, was left broke by a planned move thwarted by the discovery of roof leaks and mold in the new retail space.

The donation will help Neiswender and other volunteers pay their bills and provide aid as they prepare to move at least temporarily into a small storefront on the Windsor Town Green.

A liquidation sale starts Thursday at the existing store and warehouse at 3161 Coffey Lane.

COACH PETERICH wouldn’t mention this, but he just received an esteemed honor for all he’s done for young people the past almost-50 years.

In presenting Russ Peterich its Distinguished Service Award, the North Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation noted that he coached baseball at Montgomery High for 37 seasons. At that was the tip of the iceberg.

Peterich also coached Vikings in four other sports, founded the Santa Rosa district’s soccer programs, reached out to kids with drug or alcohol problems, helped create the district’s concussion baseline testing program and changed the course of who knows how many lives through his mentoring and care.

“Coach” is still at it, as the district’s athletic director coordinator. The NCS aptly boiled down his distinction to this: he focuses always on helping a teen to “get a little better - as a student, as an athlete, as a person.”

AND AT THE Y, a couple of good guys have received well-earned tributes for helping folks to become and stay fit more than a quarter century.

From 1987 to 2000, Ralph Harms led the three-days-a-week 6:30 a.m. Y’s Way to Fitness class and Jerry Lyman filled in. In 2000, they switched roles.

How many classes have they missed in those 27 years?

Goose-egg.

ON THE ROAD, AGAIN: CHP Officer Mike Phennicie was taking a lunch break in Cloverdale, grabbing a bite with two of the northernmost Sonoma County town’s police officers. A young man approached their table.

He asked, could he catch a ride to Willits?

The Cloverdale cops told him they don’t leave the city limits as a rule and Phennicie explained that he generally doesn’t venture over the Sonoma-Mendocino county line. The fellow turned away and sat at a table.

Phennicie gazed at him. A light flashed on in the patrolman’s head.

He recalled encountering the young man once before. In May of 2012, Phennicie had answered a report of a pedestrian walking near traffic on Highway 101 between Cloverdale and Geyserville.

The fellow who’d just asked for a ride was the same guy. When Phennicie approached him along the highway more than two years ago, he’d said he was on his way to Willits, where he had family.

Without warning, he then bolted into the traffic lanes and was slammed by a large truck. He was horribly injured, but survived.

As Phennicie eyed him at the café the other day, it occurred to him that the young man looked still to be despondent.

So the officer stepped to his table and said, yes, he could give him a ride into Mendocino County. Off they went.

When Phennicie had driven as far north as he felt he could reasonably go, he stopped at a safe place. He asked the man if he remembered him.

The passenger shook his head. Phennicie recounted them meeting on a very rough day in 2012.

The fellow apologized for that, saying that back then he’d “been in a bad place.” The patrolman asked if he was doing OK now. The fellow assured him he was. Exiting the cruiser, he thanked Phennicie for the ride.

The young man stepped off to the north and the officer turned back south.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.