“Hi Will, you may not recall me, but I dropped off a donation to the Rescue Mission Alliance Valley Food Bank. I wanted to send you the attached picture of you and me and tell you a little about what we were doing that day. May 6th would have been my son Jason’s 27th birthday. Instead, it was his first heavenly birthday as he passed away in July of 2018. The shirt I was wearing in the picture with the number 55 was in honor of him. He played football for Arizona State and was No. 55.

I struggled for several weeks trying to figure out how to get through his birthday, and then it came to me. Or I should say, Jason handed the idea to me. One of Jason’s favorite sayings was “I Got You.” He used it all the time for so many positive reasons, whether it was buying a meal for someone to eat or offering his couch to someone to sleep on.

So, we have decided to celebrate his birthdays going forward as “I Got You” day. That is, we will spend every May 6th trying to help others… trying to show them that there are people out there that “got them” and are there to help get them through their day. My sister Sherri and my husband Gregg joined me this year in delivering clothes, food, personal care items and toys to homeless shelters, to individual homeless people we encountered on the streets, to the Rescue Mission Alliance Valley Food Bank, to no-kill animal shelters, and to the UCLA Children’s Hospital. We started our day buying drinks for the two cars behind us at Starbucks and ended the day buying a meal for the car behind us at McDonald’s.

What made the day even more special is that hundreds of my friends and friends of friends carried the “I Got You” spirit forward on that day doing special things for people who needed a little help.

I cannot thank you enough for the gratitude you showed that day for our donation. We plan to make this a much bigger event next year and we promise your organization will be on our “I Got You” donation drive list. I also want to thank my son, Jason, for giving me a way to both honor him and make his birthday a happy day for me and so many others going forward.” ~Submitted by Jan Franklin