In honor of her milestone 100th birthday, Rosemary Dexter traded another year of gifts for a greater cause — the future of the local food pantry, Atascadero Loaves & Fishes (ALF).
"One-hundred I knew was a very special day. I thought, I don't want anything, why can't I do something for ALF?" Dexter said.
So she set out to raise $100,000 to help fund a new facility for the organization.
ALF has limited space inside its current facility to store food and outside for clients to access the site.
Dexter has ties to ALF all the way back to the food pantry's origins when her husband helped establish it.
"We came here to start the Methodist Church and he and three other pastors saw that they needed to have some place for people to go get food," Dexter said.
She later served as a volunteer there, only stopping in her 90s, at the start of the pandemic.
In honor of her connections with ALF, Dexter asked her children to help her start a fundraiser in the months leading up to her birthday.
Dexter's daughter, Carol Parente, said, “It was mom's idea... You do what your mother tells you to do when she's 100 years old."
They then organized a GoFundMe that generated over $11,000 between October and January.
ALF Secretary and Treasurer Linda Albright said a large amount of the funds they received came from checks written to ALF in Rosemary's honor.
“Week after week for the last few months, there have been many more donations, many of them in special envelopes that say 'Rosemary'," Albright said.
Rosemary personally matched $30,000 of the donations, bringing the total to around $67,000.
If you'd like to donate, you can do so via Rosemary's GoFundMe or by writing a check to ALF with 'Rosemary' in the memo.
