Freestone grandmother to sing National Anthem at Giants game

Six years have passed since 14-year-old Takeimi “Tiki” Rao died after a sleep-over party at her home in Santa Rosa. Her best friend did something to mark the sorrowful anniversary.

Lexi Evans, who’s now 19 and preparing to attend UC Davis, went on an “acts of kindness” spree.

To spread some surprise caring in her late friend’s honor, Lexi grabbed her 14-year-old sister, Grace, dropped 10 bucks on the counter at a Valero station and asked that it go toward the next customer’s gasoline purchase. They did the same at a fast-food restaurant. They bought four pizzas and delivered them to people living beneath a bridge downtown. They learned that the tip jar at Foster’s Freeze had been stolen so replaced it and dropped a few dollars in. And they bought a dozen roses and left one on the windshields of a dozen cars at Montgomery Village.

Through Facebook, Lexi encouraged others to do something randomly kind in Takeimi’s honor, and to let her know about it. Then she wrote up all of the acts in a little book and gave it to her late friend’s mother.

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SAVING WALLY’S CAR: Wally Lowry is in a hospital today and he may be there a while. The neurosurgery required by the spinal damage the impish, 83-year-old retired SSU business professor, former city schools trustee and longtime community angel sustained in a fall was no small deal.

As Wally prepared to take leave from his fellow jokesters in the Empire Breakfast Club, a few of them told him not to worry, they would buy his car.

That’s very funny. Wally knew why they would buy his car: So that his wife, Ellie, can’t sell it to who-knows-who.

Back in 2003, Wally spent many miserable months hospitalized with a bout of pancreatitis that he was fortunate to survive. It made Ellie so sad to see his Buick sit unused day after day that she up and sold it.

Wally finally came home and said something close to, “My darling, you did what?”

Today he’s laid up in a hospital again and probably smiling at his friends’ assurance they’ll buy his Lexus before Ellie can run a for-sale ad. One pal told Wally that just to be sure, he’ll buy the house, too.

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TODAY AT AT&T PARK is Girl Scouts Day. Will a Girl Scout sing the National Anthem? Yes and no.

Fans at the 1:05 p.m. game against the Padres will stand as Elaine Joyce of greater Freestone takes the mic.

Elaine was indeed a Girl Scout, pinned initially in 1935. Not terribly long after she retired her scout uniform she donned that of an Army nurse in World War II.

And all throughout, Elaine has loved to sing. A while back, her son, Thomas “Tif” Joyce, and other admirers shot a video of her singing “The Star Bangled Banner” and mailed it to folks who select home-game performers.

From AT&T Park came a prompt response: They wanted 93-year-old Joyce to sing the National Anthem on Girl Scouts Day.

When I spoke with Joyce, she’d been practicing and pondering techniques for not freezing up there in front of 40,000-some people.

Said the mother of seven, “I’m going to look up at the crowd and I’m going to imagine they’re all wearing diapers.”

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.