By JOSEPH KELLARD
While the Oceanside woman receives some assistance from her husband, Richard, and other relatives, Hansen spends several days each week doing a variety of activities that help provide for the poor and hungry in local communities.
She devotes each Sunday and Monday afternoon to rummaging through circulars for the best buys and clipping coupons, many of which she gets from her weekend newspaper-reading son-in-law. She goes shopping Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at Pathmark and Waldbaum¹s in Baldwin and Walgreens in Oceanside.
Hansen collects bags of nonperishables, from rice, spaghetti and cereal to toiletries, at the bottom of her basement stairs, where, about once a month, she and her husband deliver them to a Lutheran church she attends in Rockville Centre. There they are transferred to the emergency food center at the Long Island Council of Churches in Freeport.
³The number of bags vary each week, depending on where I can get a good deal with the coupons,² Hansen said, standing in her basement, which is also loaded with items like paper towels that she stocks up on for herself at BJs in Freeport.
While Hansen won¹t estimate how much money she spends in her solo charitable efforts, she does keep a general tally of all the shopping bags full of food and toiletries she delivers: 456 in 2005. In addition, she mails out Betty Crocker box tops to Saint Jude¹s Ranch for Children in Nevada, which buys computers and other items for needy children.
³She just feels that no one in the United States should be hungry,² Richard said of his wife¹s motivation to take on alone the efforts typical of an entire service organization.
³Why?² Hansen said. ³Because my mother always taught us the saying, ŒThere but for the grace of God go I.¹ And I always think, you know, you never can tell.²
Hansen is especially motivated by memories of the poor elderly people she used to see when she volunteered at Lutheran Community Services in Hempstead. She packed boxes of donations for such people starting about 10 years ago. ³When I began packing those boxes, a lot of the people we helped out were your senior citizens and then your young women on welfare,² Hansen said. ³It¹s scary out there, especially for the elderly.²
Hansen has worked at School 3 in Oceanside for about 16 years, at first as a lunch monitor. For the past six years she has been a full-time teacher¹s aid. After taking this position, she discontinued her volunteer work at LCS and, about four years ago, she began doing solo volunteer work.
She vows to continue it, and hopes she can be an example to others. ³I¹d just like people to be aware that there are a lot of people out there that do need help,² she said. ³Not only here on Long Island, but throughout the United States.²
