LARGO, Fla. \u2014 Gail Brnich has spent 15 years collecting clothes, shoes and personal items for Pinellas County children entering foster care.<\/p>\n
On a recent Saturday, Brnich organized what she called a \u201cbaby shower\u201d with her neighbors in the Coastal Ridge community to collect gifts for foster children, including donated clothes, bags of items and other supplies.<\/p>\n
Brnich said she learned about the needs of children entering foster care while working in Child Protective Services for the Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was them carrying it all in,\u201d Brnich said of a\u00a0photo showing a previous donation effort with her grandchildren at the Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Brnich said that after one donation trip, her grandchildren asked if they could do it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd on the way home, they said, ‘Grandma, can\u2019t we do this again next year?’\u201d Brnich said. \u201cI said, ‘Absolutely, we can do it as a baby shower here and invite all my friends.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Her grandchildren helped her organize a donation event in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made the flyers, wrote out thank you cards and they even did some of the cooking,\u201d Brnich said.<\/p>\n
Brnich continued donating over the years, sometimes with help from family and sometimes on her own. She said one year, she found a deal while a chain store was closing and bought 100 pairs of shoes for $1 each.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy cart was totally filled,\u201d Brnich said. \u201cIt was fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The donations from the recent neighborhood event will go to an organization called Voices for Children.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I love it,\u201d Brnich said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have done it without them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brnich said she hopes her work with her grandchildren encourages other grandparents to help foster children.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause parents don\u2019t have time for that,\u201d Brnich said. \u201cGrandparents do, and it\u2019s a great way for grandparents to connect with their grandkids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brnich said the work continues to be meaningful for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy it,\u201d Brnich said. \u201cIt makes me feel good. And I think that\u2019s what everybody does.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LARGO, Fla. \u2014 Gail Brnich has spent 15 years collecting clothes, shoes and personal items for Pinellas County…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[767,2297,274,770,2296,28,115,596,2298,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278],"class_list":["post-406037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-community","tag-app-everyday-heroes","tag-app-top-stories","tag-community-news","tag-everyday-hero","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-rick-elmhorst","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}