Jefferson Awards: Alameda Woman's Sewing Hobby Keeps East Bay Homeless Warm
ALAMEDA (CBS 5) - Some homeless people in the East Bay are keeping warm with handmade blankets, all because a waitress got wrapped up in a sewing dilemma.
Linda Booth is hard to miss, a 64-year-old woman with rainbow hair hopping among the lunchtime crowd. Booth has spent the last 16 years waitressing at Albert's Cafe on Webster Street in Alameda. She spends her spare time serving up her own brand of warmth, sewing free homemade quilts for the homeless.
Her giving started started six years ago. Booth was sewing to supplement her income, and pondered how to use a pile of leftover fabric.
"So I just sewed the scraps together and made blankets and gave to people who were out in the streets or whatever," she remembered.
It takes Booth four to five hours to sew one quilt. When she's made several, she gives them to the homeless at shelters in Alameda and Antioch, near her work and home.
"When I got my armful of blankets and they're sitting outside in the cold, they come running up, 'Can I have this one? Can I have this one? Thank you!'" Booth reports. "They're all excited and that makes me feel good."
Booth's friend Pattie Woodard said her work doesn't stop at the shelters.
"She'll go up and down the streets to see people laying on the ground and give 'em a quilt," Woodard said.
Anytime Booth needs more blankets to make quilts, she puts a sign in the cafe window, and donations come pouring in.
"My customers are wonderful. They just donate, donate, donate. I finally had to say slow down! I don't have room for everything," she said with a laugh.
Longtime cafe customer Lark McMullin-Ramirez said she often contributes material because she gets wrapped up in Booth's generosity.
"When I heard about it, I started to cry," McMullin-Ramirez said, her eyes tearing again. "She's just a wonderful person. I just love it. She just gives and gives."
Linda's patchworks also comfort those who grieve. She took the clothes of a couple who died in a plane crash and sewed them into blankets for their children.
"After I made the blankets and gave them to them, the uncle told me the youngest boy was so happy. He said, 'I wanted something so bad that would remind me of my Dad and now I can wrap myself in this blanket and think about him.' I think that was the one that made me feel the best."
So, for distributing of dozens of free handmade blankets to the homeless and heartbroken, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Linda Booth.
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