Washing kids' coats a labor of love for dry cleaner

MOSES LAKE — How many children’s coats has Brandi Haug washed in the last few days?

“I can’t even,” Hang said. “I can’t even guess. Bags and bags and bags full.”

“We were going to try and keep track of them, but it was too hard. Too hard to keep count,” she said.

Haug is the owner of Cobie’s Fine Dry Cleaning in the Vista Village shopping center — the same place Chico’s Pizza is located — and this year is cleaning all of the children’s coats collected by the Moses Lake Rotary Club.

The coats will be given out this Saturday, Nov. 10, from 8:30-10:30 a.m. in the cafeteria at Chief Moses Middle School to families in need. It’s first-come, first-served, and the Rotary said that in previous years it has typically given out 500-700 coats of all sizes the kids and even some to their parents.

“I think last year they said they had 900,” Haug said. “I’ll know on Friday when we have everything set out and sorted.”

This is the first year that Haug, who has owned Cobie’s Dry Cleaning for two years, has volunteered to clean all of the coats in the Coats for Kids giveaway. Along with employee Marilynn Reyes, who has worked at Cobie’s for 11 years, the two have been busy washing coats as well as their normal load of laundry and dry cleaning.

“This is a great program,” Haug said. “I was excited to do it; there are a lot of kids in need of this.”

Haug is happy to donate her company’s time to something she views as a good cause.

“I think it’s important to be able to give back to the community that supports me,” she said. “We’ve been really busy and (customers) have done great for us since I took over, so anything we can try and do to give back, we try and give back.”

“We’re happy to do it next year,” Reyes added.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.