Moses Lake Key Club nets herd of stuffed animals

MOSES LAKE - The Key Club members brought in the big blue unicorn and the huge teddy bear, and a box of stuffed animals, and a big plastic garbage bag, and another one, then a bunch more. A lot of stuffed animals. But they kept coming.

Trash bags, grocery bags, a bear too big for a bag, they piled up in one corner of the choir room, somewhere between 300 and 350 bears, cats, dogs, goats, sheep, snakes and a few unidentified stuffed objects.

It qualified as a success, the stuffed animal drive, "or as we called it, Operation Animal House. We spent days coming up with the title," said Bryce Merkley, the Key Club's bulletin editor and chair for Operation Animal House.

Operation Animal House is the Key Club's contribution to a Moses Lake woman's effort to provide stuffed animals to abused or neglected children in emergency situations.

Laurie Kaehler hit a rough patch in her life, which included an emergency trip to a women's shelter. One of the memories from that period, she said, is the way her children lost things that were important to them, including their stuffed animals.

She worked through the rough times, and as she did, she said, she made a promise to God. When abused or neglected children in emergency situations needed a stuffed animal for comfort, she would help them get one.

Her son summed it up best for her, she said. Children need "something that shares the pain in your life," she said.

Kaehler said there was trouble finding time, until now. Now she's got time, and she wants to get other people involved, challenge the whole country if she can. She started with Moses Lake High School.

Principal Josh Meek went to the Key Club. Key Club is the youth club affiliated with the Kiwanis, and its members follow the Kiwanis mission of service to the community.

Operation Animal House seemed like a good project, Merkley said.

The committee in charge of the stuffed animal drive, "which really consisted of me and two other people." Merkley said, got the word out among teachers and made some posters. But the turning point appears to have been the decision to make it a class competition.

"People will do anything for a box of doughnuts," Merkley said.

It took a while to get going, Merkley said, but after a few days stuffed animals started pouring in. Kids took their teddy bears, kittens, dogs and Patrick the Starfish (among others) toys to first period and Merkley and other Key Club members collected them after school. Which was no easy job, frankly. "It's amazing how heavy they get when you carry them around the whole school," he said.

Moses Lake students responded to the idea that every child in an emergency situation should have a stuffed animal for comfort, if they wanted it. "It was really awesome," Merkley said.

"It was really cool because it was such a big success," he said.

Kaehler said the students' response disproved the stereotype of teens as texting slackers. "Everybody seems to believe teens have too much time on their hands and they don't do anything. Well, they've got something on their parents, don't they?"

Kaehler's plan is to explain her project in a YouTube video, and challenge the entire country to find and donate stuffed animals to children in need. She wants to target National Children's Day, which doesn't have official observance in the United States, but which is recognized on the first Sunday in June, after a proclamation by President George W. Bush in 2001. President Bill Clinton was the first to proclaim National Child's Day, in 1998.