When a five-year-old named Spencer read about a three-year-old boy who had lost all his belongings when a fire burned down his house in 2001, Spencer offered any of his toys to the boy. The child picked Spencer’s prize dinosaur collection. Spencer also donated his new bed for the boy to sleep on. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department awarded Spencer a certificate and a t-shirt, and later gave him a ride in a police car and let him use the police radio. “You should have seen his face!” says crime prevention specialist Leslie Haight. “And those big, bad, macho deputies melted and showed their true colors in giving Spencer a handshake and a hug. Days like that make it all worth it!”

In other Orange County activities, students have painted a new CHARACTER COUNTS! room at the local Boys and Girls Club, where kids go to watch TV and play board games. The brightly-colored mural shows the beach and names the Six Pillars of Character. In addition, Peer Advisory Leadership (PAL) students taught CC! all year to the student body and collected stuffed animals for the needy. And at Laura’s House daycare center, children performed a skit for local police and showed off their life-sized drawings of human figures.