Hero: High School Senior a Local Leader

    Beth Levy is like many other high school seniors.  She’s getting ready for college and excited about her future, but it’s the things she and her sisters have already accomplished that are so extraordinary.
  “We do projects from in the country to overseas,” Levy said.
    Levy is President of U.S. Kids Care, a group of local kids ages 6 to 18.
    In the past three years the group has grown to more than 100 members.
    It all started with blue bracelets.
  “My sisters and I wanted to do something to help, so we sold bracelets to help the victims of the tsunami,“ she said.
    Those bracelets raised thousands of dollars for tsunami relief.
    That project was just the beginning.  Since, US Kids Care has headed up countless community projects including helping restore Fern Park in Roanoke. 
    But perhaps one of their most successful projects started with a brown paper bag.
    It’s the U.S. Kids Care school supply drive.
    The group leaves brown paper bags on doorsteps all over the area – 800 in all.
    “A week later, on that date, we went and picked up the bags filled with school supplies and distributed them to the different organizations,“ she said.  “The kids love them. They can go to school now with the supplies, and they don’t have to go without anything.“
    In just a few months Levy will head to Virginia Tech to major in education.
    As her excitement of becoming a Hokie and one day an elementary school teacher grows, she says leaving U.S. Kids Care will be bittersweet.
  “I won’t be able to be a huge part of it, but I want to definitely help a lot,” she said.