How do you start your morning projects? Hot coffee and breakfast snacks, of course! Starbucks District Managers joined Habitat for Humanity Riverside early yesterday morning ready to help Evelyn, a homeowner in Corona La Linda mobile home park in Home Gardens. Seven Southern California Starbucks managers who oversee more than 140 stores throughout the region took time out of their day to paint her home. What a Blessing!
Evelyn is retired but still working to supplement her Social Security income just to make ends meet. She also helps take care of her grandchildren. Her patio steps and trim needed repair and it was definitely time to update the pink trim. The park management had concerns about these things and requested that she take action. Evelyn does not have the means to pay for the repairs and painting the home. Once again, Habitat for Humanity Riverside and it’s amazing volunteers came to help out. As usual on A Brush with Kindness projects, Habitat staff took time ahead of the volunteer day to make sure the repairs were completed, the steps were safe for the homeowner and the volunteers before the paint day.
Right after their morning coffee and orientation, the Starbucks crew and Habitat volunteers got straight to business grabbing extension poles, brushes, rollers, and ladders. Jack and Al started working on the trim and eves as Ramine took care of the blue tape detail. We found out it wasn’t the first time Ramine got assigned blue tape detail. He did a great job and will be the official blue tape detail person if he returns on another A Brush with Kindness project. The two-tone faux shutters looked really outdated so the crew made a decision to make them look more like real shutters and they came out looking great!
It was a small home and the perfect size for this volunteer group and they finished the job in just over 4 hours (not counting coffee breaks). The busy managers took a photo with Evelyn and went back to their road warrior schedules making sure their Starbuck stores are running efficiently. Evelyn thanked the entire group and told them how relieved she was that this burden was taken from her and her home was repaired, safe and beautiful.
