Smith: Gladys Wing is still on it at age 105

Except for the cake and ice cream and the special guests, Monday at Santa Rosa’s quietly extraordinary Welfare League thrift shop was just another work day for Gladys Wing.

“Right now my job is sorting cards,” said Gladys, long ago the proprietor of Wing’s Sports Wear and Uniforms at Montgomery Village, from beneath an adorable birthday crown.

Through her 55 years as a member of the League, she has put her seamstress mastery to work repairing donated clothes. She has assembled innumerable sets of clothing for needy new moms. And she’s been indispensable to the Christmas Unlimited gift program that last year spent thrift-store profits on new clothing, toys and books for 2,300 local kids.

These days, Gladys sorts the unused greeting cards that come into the shop. “We’re still getting an awful lot of Christmas cards,” she observed.

Born in San Francisco in 1910, this woman who’s done inestimable good for others beamed Monday as fellow thrift-shop volunteers and several family members lauded her for also achieving age 105.

Then it was off to the Union Hotel for a birthday meal of lasagna and a glass of wine.

THEY MIGHT DIE in Lake County, so homeless dogs and cats sheltered in Lakeport are being moved to Sonoma and Napa counties by rescuers keen to link them up with families.

Nineteen dogs and five cats were removed Monday from the Lake County shelter due to fears they might be euthanized to make room for an anticipated influx of pets fleeing the devilish Rocky fire.

Relocated animals were taken in by the Sonoma Humane Society, Petaluma Animal Services Foundation and Calistoga’s Wine Country Animal Lovers. If you’d care to meet one, the interest is no doubt mutual.

SPOKES AND VINES: Great Britain’s esteemed Guardian newspaper has listed west Sonoma County’s Rodota Trail among the world’s top 10 bike-friendly wine routes.

The Guardian shouted out the Taft Street and Iron Horse wineries, the berry special Kozlowski Farms and Forestville’s Nightingale Breads as jewels along the Rodota Trail.

Among the other nine world-class cycle and wine routes are those in France’s Loire Valley, Marlborough in New Zealand, South Africa’s Cape Winelands and Coquimbito in Argentina.

THE NIGHTMARE on Santa Rosa’s historic Wheeler Street, near Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, at last abates.

For well more than a decade, neighbors of a sickeningly decrepit, moldy, varmint-infested house pleaded with City Hall to do something about it. One problem: the elderly woman who inherited the house from her mother and abandoned it for a motel room wouldn’t answer the door for officials hoping to discuss the problem.

Weeks ago, the city persuaded a judge to place the property in receivership. Now a law firm specializing in such projects is having great loads of fouled furniture, debris and filth carted off. The firm will list the property for sale after deciding if the house can be sold as a fixer-upper or should be rehabbed or simply scraped away.

One day, the neighbors will welcome warmly whoever moves into the restored or new but historically consistent home that will displace Wheeler Street’s little house of horror.

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