Chris Smith: Santa Rosa pie baker could use your help

Too early for pie? It certainly isn’t too early to be thinking about Thanksgiving pie. You can be sure Kati Hilario is.

Kati is the astounding Santa Rosa kid, now 16, who bakes pumpkin pies every November, sells them by preorder for $15 each and donates the proceeds to the Redwood Empire Food Bank.

This year, the fifth for Kati’s “Pies for Poverty,” she’s looking for volunteers to help make deliveries on Thanksgiving Eve, Nov. 25. She also invites patrons to consider picking up their pies at the food bank off Airport Boulevard, where she and her mom, Lisa Ann, and some helpers use the nifty commercial kitchen to do the baking.

To order a pumpkin pie or volunteer, message Kati at pfpproject@gmail.com or snail-mail a check for 15 bucks to 4928 Stonehedge Drive, Santa Rosa 95405.

Her first year, 2011, Kati baked 16 pies. That figure grew to 51 the second year, 76 the third year and an impressive 150 last year.

Generosity in excess of the asking price has allowed Kati to donate $5,614 to the food bank.

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SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Shannon Beglin perked up when a new boy joined her class at St. Eugene’s School.

Larry Brown was his name. Shannon, propelled by her first crush, took advantage of her classroom chore of pinning finished assignments to the bulletin and placed Larry’s papers right next to hers.

In fourth grade, Shannon recalls as if it were yesterday though it was 40 years ago, “I don’t know how we did it, but Larry and I scored the lead roles in the classroom Christmas play.” She portrayed Mary, he Joseph. It was like an answer to her prayer.

She’d never revealed her affection when, in the sixth grade, her folks transferred her to a public school. After that, she never saw more of Larry than a glimpse, and she didn’t summon the nerve to speak to him.

“For years,” said Shannon, whose surname is now Cresci, “I wondered what happened to Larry as I knew he was destined for great things. And then a miracle happened … Facebook was created.”

She found Larry’s page and discovered that he’s a judge in Sacramento and has a son in high school. They befriended each other online but didn’t message each other until last Christmas, when Shannon, a Realtor and member of the board of the Family Justice Center, posted a photo of herself and her two children. Larry “liked” it.

That led to them exchanging messages, discovering both were unattached and at last agreeing to meet the next time Larry was to return to Santa Rosa to visit family.

Since the Facebook friends came face-to-face, things have gone virtually perfectly. Though residential questions remain unanswered, the wedding is set for the first weekend in May.

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‘STEVEN UNIVERSE’ mean anything to you? I’m way too old and out of it to know it’s a Cartoon Network series featuring a very pink protagonist named Amethyst.

But it’s well known to the young family of Sebastopol’s Brendan and Kelly Ann Boylan, whose elaborate and very pink Steven Universe get-up won the Cartoon Network’s nationwide Halloween costume contest.

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I’M NO FILM CRITIC, but I found “The Peanuts Movie,” which I saw in 3-D, to be doggone delightful.

The computer animation by Blue Sky Studios is stunning, and Snoopy, Charlie Brown and all the other characters look and sound just as you’d imagine as they emerge from the comics page to the big screen in premier computer-generated imaging.

The script by Charles Schulz’s Santa Rosa son, Craig, and grandson, Bryan, deepens and advances the familiar storylines of Charlie Brown’s historically hopeless enchantment with the Little Red-Haired Girl and Snoopy the World War I Flying Ace’s riddled pursuit of the Red Baron.

I laughed and smiled and, I admit it, concealed a tear beneath the two pairs of glasses.

Would Sparky Schulz like the movie? Truly, I imagine the late “Peanuts” doodler watching the final scene and breaking into the happy dance.

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