Cheers to our do-gooding neighbors

Since we met Shelly Johnson last Friday, we haven’t been able to get her good work out of our heads.

She’s the Meals On Wheels driver for the Wasilla Senior Center Inc. who let the Frontiersman tag along as she delivered meals and good cheer to local seniors Friday morning.

Johnson knows the names, food preferences, life stories and birthdays for all her friends along her meal delivery route. She buys them birthday cards. She stops to see them on her days off. She helps them with small home and auto repairs.

Johnson says her peers tease her that her friends are all seniors. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there are a lot of local seniors who have her cellphone number and who wouldn’t hesitate to call her in the event of emergency, just to visit for a few minutes or just to check in on her.

None of this is Johnson’s job. She’s just paid to drive the Wasilla Senior Center’s vehicle to deliver Meals On Wheel.

The cellphone is hers. The birthday cards she buys. And the kindness and caring she provides are priceless.

But then again, that’s just the kind of community the Mat-Su Valley is — we help each other.

Our story about Johnson also generated an email from a Palmer family with another story of extra-mile kindness to share. We plan to share that story in a future issue of the Frontiersman.

The whole experience made us think more about the value of telling stories about the ways we help each other.

What about adding a new feature to our community newspaper called “Extra Mile?”

Readers could nominate local folks who go above and beyond in their daily lives to make our community great. Then we’d use readers’ ideas and profile those do-gooding neighbors in Extra Mile stories on our pages.

As a community newspaper, one of our major roles is to be a community cheerleader. Of course, we cover hard news, too. But a big chunk of the reporting we do falls into this cheerleading category. (Give us a V! Give us an A! Give us an L-L-E-Y!)

We think our time and resources are better spent bragging about the good rather than bemoaning the bad. To borrow an idea from Mahatma Gandhi, we must be the change we wish to see.

Will you help us brag about our neighbors who go the Extra Mile? Tell us what you think at news@frontiersman.com or call Managing Editor Heather A. Resz at 352-2268.