9-year-old enlists help of YMCA members for animal blanket effort

Founded "Blankets Fur Beasties"

By Rick Haase, Photos by Kevin Reeves

In most ways, nine-year-old Harley Helman is a typical little girl.

She’s cute as a button, and very excited to be entering the fifth grade this fall at Big Creek Elementary School in Middleburg Heights.

She earned “Straight A’s” during the third and fourth quarter of the 2009-2010 school year, and is enrolled in the Big Creek talented and gifted (student) program.

She loves animals.

At her Shawnee Trail home you’ll find lots of them.

One dog – Dino – named after the Flintstones’ famous purple pet dinosaur; three cats – Lucy, Gracie and Louie; four mice – Rain, Fawn, Friday and Lennon; one rat – Jennifer; and three hermit crabs – Shelly, Michelle and Herschel.

The hermit crabs live in a tank in her bedroom, and the pet rat was a Christmas present from her aunt, Cindy.

But Helman – at the tender age of nine – is unique in that she’s also a non-profit businesswoman.

Last year, she founded Blankets Fur Beasties, a nonprofit charity which delivers blankets, pet toys and treats to 11 Greater Cleveland area animal shelters, including the Animal Protective League, the Parma Animal Shelter, and the Northeast Ohio Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Helman and her mother, Cherie, visited the Ridgewood Family YMCA, 6840 Ridge Road, June 24, where they spent about two hours with a group of excited senior citizens – participants in the Y’s SilverSneakers program, a health and wellness effort exclusively for those age 65 and above.

Silver Sneakers group helping with Blankets Fur Beasties

The seniors helped Helman’s nonprofit charity by making blankets for the animals in the aforementioned animal shelters.

Helman said she came up with the idea for Blankets Fur Beasties while cleaning out her closet at home, when she found a few blankets around the house that she had not used in a while.

Since her family didn’t need them anymore, she donated them to the Animal Protective League.

In March, she came across an old sheet, when she was cleaning out her bedroom closet.

"Mine’s really messy, still,” she admitted with a big smile.

She remembered donating the blankets last year, and asked her Mom how she could help.

“My Mom said the sheet was too big (to donate),” said Helman. “So I started to get some baby blankets together because I had some.”

She has started her own web site – blanketsfurbeasties.com -- and says she even hopes to start a Facebook and MySpace page to garner donations from others in the community who want to help.

In her own words from her web site: “Blankets Fur Beasties collects new and used baby blankets, quilts, receiving blankets and dog and cat toys and other animal stuff too -- from generous people and businesses. The blankets are taken to area animal shelters and rescues so their animals can have something soft to sleep on while they are waiting to be placed in their ‘forever home’ ".

Thus far this year, Helman has donated 598 blankets and other items to area animal shelters.

The Ridgewood Family YMCA seniors group made 34 blankets during her visit last week.

The group of about 30 seniors, all women, loved it. Among those in the crowd was 90-year-old Carmella Trunkett of Parma, who worked with her good friend, Mary Jane Wolfe of Parma Heights, creating the blankets.

As the seniors worked away, Ridgewood Family YMCA Active Older Adults Coordinator Jeanne Sutyak, who, along with Strongsville resident Shawn Kata, orchestrated Helman’s visit to the Parma YMCA, put a salsa music CD on.

Some of the ladies danced around the gym as they made the animal blankets.

Kata said he read about Helman in a Strongsville publication and worked to bring her to the Y, where he is the newest member of the Ridgewood Branch Advisory Board. His 15-year-old daughter recently had a sleepover, where she and her friends also made blankets to donate to Blankets Fur Beasties.

Kata said he was eager to expand local programs for seniors, and thought it was a perfect project for this local group. He personally donated the fabric and supplies for making the blankets, many of which had designs appropriate for pets, including dog bones.

“What a nice idea for a nine-year-old girl to come up with,” said Kata, who, when he isn’t volunteering himself, works to educate seniors and help them with their healthcare choices and Medicare health options.

Sutyak, who regularly teaches this particular senior group exercise and dance, called the afternoon “a good way for our seniors to be a part of the community.”

These people feel important doing this,” Sutyak said. “It gives them a purpose.”

Helman’s father, John, a diesel mechanic, also gets in on his daughter’s act.

“He’s the driver,” Helman said. “Sometimes I tease him and call him the chauffeur.”

But both her parents voluntarily aid their daughters’ cause by going to local organizations to pick up donations.

So what does Helman think of her idea to help the animals?

“It’s really cool,” she said.

If you can help with a donation, e-mail Helman at blanketsfurbeasties@yahoo.com .

YMCA employee Jeannie with Mary Jane Shamrock.

Pat Werle, left and friend.

Marissa Ratino and Brooke Cramer

Mary Ann Janusek