Lost ski wear becomes clothing for homeless
By Drew Himmelstein, J Weekly
When Corinne Hindes was 11, she saw a man in her hometown of Walnut Creek wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans on the coldest day of the year. She had started to notice the homeless people in her area that year, but seeing this man enduring the cold without warm clothes stuck with her.
She was also pretty sure she knew how to help.
Hindes, now 16, had been an avid skier since her parents taught her the sport at the age of 4. She was a member of the ski team at Kirkwood Mountain Resort, and she had noticed that high-quality parkas, gloves and cold weather gear routinely sat in the resort’s lost and found, left behind by tourists unlikely to return and claim them. She and a fellow ski team member, Katrine Kirsebom, asked if they could donate the items to the homeless; thus, Warm Winters, a nonprofit that engages youth volunteers and ski resorts in 12 states to donate their lost-and-found items to the homeless, was born.
