Meet Mary Lorenz, F.A.S.T. Lions Club backpack program coordinator

Nominated by: Susan Dolan, Solano County Child Welfare Services community liaison. She says Lorenz' dedication to providing backpacks to foster-care children has brightened the lives of hundreds of children who frequently have nothing when they're brought into the county system.

"The backpacks are awesome," Dolan said. "With Lorenz' help we probably distribute 250 to 300 of them a year for the kids. And their faces light up when they get them. We just had some kids go to camp and those backpacks made their day."

In many cases, Dolan said, children who are new to the foster care system have little or nothing when they arrive.

"Mary and her club want to give the foster children something that is their own. The backpacks are given to children who are taken out of their homes and don't have any belongings except what they're wearing at the time," Dolan wrote in her nomination.

About the program: Lorenz, a Fairfield resident and F.A.S.T. Lions Club member who works for a Napa winery, was participating in a Lions Club district meeting in Eureka four years ago when a speaker from Southern California described a club-sponsored backpack program there.

Lorenz brought the idea back home and soon the Fairfield Lions group was stockpiling backpacks for Solano County foster children.

"We get the backpacks and then we put in school supplies, toiletries for the older kids, and stuffed animals," Lorenz related.