Red Hats, Biddle recognized for acts of kindness

Each year, at the Sky Valley Community Awards, recognition is given to people who, at some point during the year, performed a selfless act.

This year, the recipients of the honor included one woman and one club.

The woman, Heidi Biddle, was nominated by city volunteer coordinator Donna Murphy for something she did just before Thanksgiving.

Biddle had been in Monroe, shopping at Fred Meyer, and had stopped in the parking lot to talk to her mother on the phone when she saw a car coming down the row. The car was just about to make a sharp u-turn to get into a good spot, but Biddle could see that the driver was going to have to hit a grocery cart to make the turn.

“It was a beater of a car, and I guess that’s why the driver must not have cared if they hit it,” said Biddle. The driver did hit the cart, and it rolled toward her new car. She ran to catch the cart, snagging it just before it hit her car. The driver of the other car raised her hands and motioned, “what?”

A few moments later, still rattled, Biddle looked at her receipt and realized she’d been overcharged $6, but she didn’t feel like going back in the store to try to correct it.

So she decided to just leave. But when she approached her car door, she found that a rather beat-up van had parked so close she couldn’t get in. She got in the passenger’s side instead and crawled into the driver’s seat, by then so annoyed she said she thought of ramming the van.

Instead, she drove to Starbucks and got in line in the drive-through. As she sat, she wondered how she might lift herself from the foul mood in which she found herself following three negative incidents in quick succession.

What she did was buy her own coffee-and the coffee of the four cars behind her.

“I didn’t know Heidi when I heard this story, and literally went looking for her because she changed my life so immensely,” wrote Murphy. “Whenever bad things happen to me forevermore, I will look to spread goodness instead of badness to overcome the negative feelings that overwhelm me.”

For working on strengthening a community torn by political strife, the Sky Valley Chamber of Commerce Director put in a winning nomination of the Gold Bar Red Hats.

Among the activities mentioned by Copple, the Red Hats have supported Safe Stop, a children’s evening program designed to give kids a safe place to hang out. They bake cookies and bring in frosting so the kids can decorate them and they by provided t-shirts, dye and fabric paint so that kids could design their own shirts.

They are active in Gold Bar’s Gold Dust Days, dressing up and riding in the parade, sponsoring a pageant for young women and putting on skits. They also buy candy to distribute, provide supplies for activities and help children decorate their bicycles for the bicycle parade.

They also dress up, ride in the parade and hand out candy for National Night Out.

They have provided facilities for city events, paying for music or Sani-Cans, and they took on the responsibility for the Christmas Tree lighting, providing refreshments and music.

And at Christmas, they provided stockings filled with goodies for some of the area’s less privileged kids.

“They give of their own time and money to support events that bring people together for happy reasons,” said Copple. “The community has come through this difficult time even stronger than before because of the leadership in place at City Hall and the great citizens of Gold Bar. The Gold Bar Red Hat Ladies are the heart of this movement and the entire community is grateful.”