By Terra Avilla
I’m not going to pretend to be objective this week. Sharon McBride is one of my all time favorite humans. She’s also the mom of two of my other favorite people and the grandmother of a slew of my favorite tiny people, who call her Bob Bob.
But strip all of that away and she’d still belong in this column.
I found out recently that Sharon is the longest-running CASA volunteer we have. Not one of. The longest.
A “CASA” or a Court Appointed Special Advocate, is a trained volunteer a judge appoints to speak up for a child going through the foster care system. They visit the kid, they learn the situation from every angle, and they report back to the court about what that child actually needs.
Nobody pays her for it. Nobody has ever paid her for it. She has done it for years, on her own time, for kids who mostly have a whole file full of adults in and out of their lives…their CASA volunteer becomes their rock steady person.
And she doesn’t stop at the casework. She’s at the fundraisers too. Setting up, working them, buying the tickets, filling the tables. The unglamorous part that keeps the whole thing running.
Aside from her CASA work… Ms. Sharon has a heart for kids in so many other ways.
For example, last year, we were pulling together Holiday with a Hero and received late notice that we didn’t have Mrs. Claus. Or a Mr. Claus. Which is a problem when that’s the grand kick off to our event.
When we called Sharon. She (and her husband) said yes. She even showed up in her own outfit… full Mrs. Claus, every detail including her great acting with the kids!
What I remember is not the outfit. It’s her down at eye level with those kids, listening to each one like there was nobody else in the room, and I just know that memory will stick with them forever.
Sharon McBride has spent years standing up for kids who needed somebody to and never asked for a thing back.
Because a pile of grandkids get to call her Bob Bob, and the rest of us get to call her ours and we are so lucky, because she is one of the reasons we love where we live.
