SMITH: To Colby, $500 was a lot, too

You know Colby Groom. He's the Healdsburg kid who anguished through two open-heart surgeries before age 10, then asked his vintner father if they could make and sell a wine and donate the profits to healthy-heart research and services.

Colby Red was born. Colby hoped his dad, Daryl, might sell enough wine for them to make $500 in donations.

It blows the 14-year-old's mind that they've now topped $250,000. Colby Red is sold at major stores and is poured at Capital Grille, Flemings steakhouses and Kona Grill.

Colby, a freshman at Cardinal Newman, intends to keep on so that "one day, people may not have to go through invasive heart procedures ever again."

WHY SHOP LOCAL when you can shop super-local?

Downtown Santa Rosa's Share Exchange & Made Local Marketplace, retailer of arts, crafts and foods from more than 270 creative locals, has made a valuable promise this holiday season to 11 Sonoma County schools.

To boost local shopping and education, the shop on Fifth Street will donate 20 percent of November sales' proceeds to the partnering schools.

MILES DRIVEN: The past three years, Miles Levin has collected and donated nearly 3,000 jackets, blankets, sleeping bags, tents, tarps and pairs of socks and gloves to help homeless people endure Sonoma County's winter.

The humanitarian achievement is all the more impressive because Miles, now 17 and a senior at Sonoma Academy, deals with seizures that take a toll on him.

He persists, and he hopes this season's warm-gear drive, his last, will be the biggest. He has drop-off boxes for new and used items — new socks only, please — at the Airport Club on Aviation Boulevard and just inside the entrance to the gym at his school at Kawana Springs Road and Farmers Lane.

KATI BAKES: Not long after Kati Hilario learned from her mother, Lisa Ann, to make a tasty pumpkin pie she learned that many more Sonoma County people than she would expect go without sufficient food.

For the second Thanksgiving, the 13-year-old Rincon Valley Middle Schooler will bake and sell pies, and donate the money to the Redwood Empire Food Bank.

Kati (kati.pfpproject@gmail.com) is grateful to Nancy's Fancy's for the use its commercial kitchen. Her goal: 40 pies times $15 equals serious dough for the food bank.

FRIENDLY FOOD FIGHT: The food bank's Billy Bartz went to Sonoma Country Day School to accept a $1,200 donation from the private school's harvest fair.

Bartz praised the kids' intention also to give a heap of food to REFB's winter drive, which has placed donation barrels at scores of markets, other businesses and schools.

The Country Day students know they've got work to do if they're to be the top food-drive school. Last year, kids at Rohnert Park's Lawrence E. Jones Middle School pitched in 3,619 pounds.

Game on.

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