Faith+Values: She's a win-win woman

While helping to clean up after a church sale, Nalani Lavedure came up with a way to combine her two main passions: garage sales and helping people.

It was a two-part idea, actually. The first part was to take the items that had gone unsold at her church and deliver them to the Refugee Services center in Minneapolis, run by the Minnesota Council of Churches. When she saw all the families being helped by the program, she came up with Part Two: Making the rounds of other garage sales to see if organizers were willing to donate their leftovers to charity.

"Everybody wins," Lavedure said. The people holding the garage sale "get a tax deduction for making the donation. Plus, they don't have to hire anyone to haul away the stuff they didn't sell, because I haul it away."

She's even been known rent a truck and hire a couple of young men to haul off large pieces like furniture.

Her one-person operation is so unusual that she agreed to let the refugee center enter it in a contest being run by Reader's Digest. She won a $1,500 grant for the center. She also was the subject of a short article in the magazine in May, but she clearly doesn't consider that a plus.

"I love my anonymity," said the Crystal resident. "The chance to win a grant for the refugee center was the only reason I went along with it."

A retired machinist, these days she's splitting her volunteer shifts between the refugee center and the Restoration Center of Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis, an outreach program for people in need.

"It turns out that I have a knack for organizing," she said as she updated the job postings on a bulletin board. "I also discovered that I have a skill for job coaching."

Rolf Lowenberg-DeBoer, the church's community ministries coordinator, said that of all of Lavedure's talents, the strongest is her ability to sell herself short.

"A lot of people come here because of her," he said. "She's special. She's one of their favorites."

Lavedure isn't buying it. "I'm just doing what I like to do," she said. "Others tell me that they think it's extraordinary. I don't think so."

Mission-oriented

While she hesitates to blow her own horn, there's nothing holding her back when it comes to helping people. She knows how to put the hard sell on a soft touch.

When she approaches someone holding a garage sale, "I tell them about some of the refugees getting tears in their eyes when they see what's been donated," she said. "We've helped hundreds of people. It's awesome."

She started making the garage sale circuit in 2004 -- for charity, that is. "I've always been a big garage-saler," she said.

The only drawback to her charity was that she spending a lot of money on gasoline. So she came up with a solution.

"I printed up a flier listing the things the refugee center needed and asking people to call if they had a donation," she said. "You'd be surprised [by the response]. A lot of people would rather donate stuff to a good cause than sell it. They're happy to donate, and they're happy that it's going to a church."

In fact, rather than make her come back after their sale was over, "A lot of people would donate stuff right then."

Technically, she works a three-hour shift for the Restoration Center, where her main focus is working in the job center. But she spends a lot more time than that.

"I'm always looking for job openings," she said. "If I go to a Subway for lunch and see a help-wanted sign, I pick up an application and try to find out what the parameters are in terms of the people they're looking for."

She also has let it be known that she's never too busy to lend a sympathetic ear.

"A lot of people who come in here [the Restoration Center], their life is in flux," she said. "Sometimes they just want someone to listen to them."

A family secret

Lavedure, 58, grew up in St. Paul. Her first name came from her mother's passion for Hawaii. (She's never been there, but her mother recently visited Hawaii again.)

She kept her Reader's Digest fame so quiet that even her family didn't know.

"I got a call from one of my cousins who said, 'Nalani, I just saw you in a magazine I was reading in the dentist's office,'" she said. The story inspired her. "Now she's doing volunteer work, too."

Lavedure takes a very basic approach to volunteering. "Find a need and fill it," she said. "That's all I do. To me, it seems like everyone should do this -- but apparently they don't."

Her "find a need" philosophy is what got her involved at Central Lutheran Church. A longtime member of Osseo United Methodist Church -- "I don't know exactly how long I've been attending, but the current pastor has been there 19 years and I remember him arriving" -- she was taking a weekly Bible study class at the Minneapolis church when she wandered past the Restoration Center and noticed that the job-postings bulletin board was in dire need of organization.

"I like organizing," she said. "And I'm good at it. Since I've been here [the job center], I've also discovered that I have computer-research skills that I didn't even know about. I'm glad that I can use my skills and talents to help people have a better life."

If there's any good that came out of the shattered anonymity that followed her Reader's Digest fame, it's the lesson that one person can make a difference, she said.

"You don't need to form a committee and try to tackle all the world's problems," she said. "One person can do something. Just find something and do it."

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392